HIS RECEPTION THERE.
Before I proceed to give an account of my leaving this kingdom, it may
be proper to inform the reader of a private intrigue which had been for
two months forming against me.
I had been hitherto all my life a stranger to courts, for which I was
unqualified by the meanness of my condition. I had indeed heard and read
enough of the dispositions of great princes and ministers, but never
expected to have found such terrible effects of them in so remote a
country, governed, as I thought, by very different maxims from those in
Europe.
When I was just preparing to pay my attendance on the emperor of
Blefuscu, a considerable person at court (to whom I had been very
serviceable, at a time when he lay under the highest displeasure of his
imperial majesty) came to my house very privately at night, in a close
chair,[34] and without sending his name, desired admittance. The
chairmen were dismissed; I put the chair, with his lordship in it, into
my coat-pocket; and, giving orders to a trusty servant to say I was
indisposed and gone to sleep, I fastened the door of my house, placed
the chair on the table, according to my usual custom, and sat down by
it. After the common salutations were over, observing his lordship's
countenance full of concern, and inquiring into the reason, he desired I
would hear him with patience, in a matter that highly concerned my honor
and my life.
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