The Saturday before the commencement of the match, Harrwitz performed his feat of playing eight blindfold games simultaneously at the rooms of the Cercle, only subscribers of five francs or upwards being admitted. Herr Harrwitz had fixed upon seven o'clock in the evening as the time for commencing; and I, like many others, had advised him to choose an earlier hour, or he would not get through till long past midnight. He replied that he should finish in from four to five hours; "he knew this positively because he had been rehearsing for the occasion;" but the result proved how much he was mistaken, as he did not get through till near sunrise. His antagonists were mainly rook or rook and knight players, Signor Préti, the weakest of Morphy's blindfold opponents, being incomparably the strongest. Herr Anderssen, who was present, assured me that many of the players left pieces _en prise_, as though designedly, and that, beyond the fact of seeing the boards in his mind's eye, Harrwitz proved nothing by his exertions. The strangest affair in connection with this display is, that although Harrwitz edited a chess column in the _Monde Illustré_ he never gave a single one of his blindfold games, nor would he permit any to be made public. Mr. Harrwitz was perfectly in his right mind when endeavoring to emulate Paul Morphy. But the folks at the Régence ridiculed what they called aping his superior, and many were the squibs got off at his expense. One, the most popular of all, was as follows:-- "Tu veux singer Morphy, joueur phénoménal; Jeune imprudent, tu forces ta nature. En vain tu te poses en original, Tu n'en es que la caricature." In plain English prose--"You wish to ape Morphy, the phenomenon; imprudent young man, you strain yourself. It is useless to put yourself forward as an original; you are merely a caricature."--Not complimentary, certainly. On Monday morning, I got Morphy out of bed for the first time since his illness, and, at noon, assisted him into the room where the match was to come off. No time was lost in getting to work, and, within five minutes of his entering, as many moves had been played. Our hero had first move, and ventured the Evans' gambit, which he lost after seven hours' fighting, and upwards of seventy moves. I noticed that he was restless throughout the contest, which was only to be expected after having been so long in bed, and without nourishment. Morphy was charmed with Anderssen's defence throughout, and has frequently cited it as an admirably conducted strategy. It proved to him that the Evans' is indubitably a lost game for the first player, if the defence be carefully played; inasmuch as the former can never recover the gambit pawn, and the position supposed to be acquired at the outset, cannot be maintained.