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, 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 honour and my life.
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