name them, and let them make the best of it) Clustril
and Drunlo, to prove that any person ever came to
me incognito, except the secretary Reldresal, who
was sent by express command of his imperial majesty,
as I have before related. I should not have dwelt
so long upon this particular, if it had not been a
point wherein the reputation of a great lady is so
nearly concerned, to say nothing of my own; though
I then had the honour to be a nardac, which the treasurer
himself is not; for all the world knows, that he is
only a glumglum, a title inferior by one degree, as
that of a marquis is to a duke in England; yet I allow
he preceded me in right of his post. These false
informations, which I afterwards came to the knowledge
of by an accident not proper to mention, made the
treasurer show his lady for some time an ill countenance,
and me a worse; and although he was at last undeceived
and reconciled to her, yet I lost all credit with
him, and found my interest decline very fast with
the emperor himself, who was, indeed, too much governed
by that favourite.
CHAPTER VII.
[The author, being informed of a design to accuse
him of high-treason, makes his escape to Blefuscu.
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, 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.” His speech was to the following
effect, for I took notes of it as soon as he left
me:-
“You are to know,” said he, “that
several committees of council have been lately called,
in the most private manner, on your account; and it
is but two days since his majesty came to a full resolution.
