There is no man of whose person and deportment I retain a more vivid recollection than M. de Legalle; he was a thin, pale old gentleman, who had sat in the same seat at the Cafe, and worn the same green coat for a great number of years when I first visited Paris.
While he played at chess, he took snuffs in such profusion that his chitterling frill was literally saturated with stray particles of the powder, and he was, moreover, in the habit of enlivening the company during the progress of the game, by a variety of remarks, which every body admired for their brilliancy, and which struck me perhaps the more forcibly, as I was at that time but indifferently acquainted with the French tongue.
The "first player of the band" found it necessary to accept the Rook from M. de Legal; and it took full three years to work his way up, through the various degrees of odds, to the honour of confronting his master, on even terms, as a "first-rate".
(*) Fetis says that old chess-players at the Cafe de la Regence had repeated to him Philidor's own statement, that he did not attain his full strength until he had made his campaigns in Holland and in England.
It is also very likely, as also suggested by Allen, that Legall played Stamma, since the latter lived for a certain period in Paris where he published the Essai sur le jeu des echecs in 1737.