One day his imperial majesty, being informed of my way of living, desired that himself and his royal consort, with the young princes of the blood of both sexes, might have the happiness, as he was pleased to call it, of dining with me.  They came accordingly, and I placed them in chairs of state upon my table, just over against me, with their guards about them.  Flimnap, the lord high treasurer, attended there likewise, with his white staff; and I observed he often looked on me with a sour countenance, which I would not seem to regard, but eat more than usual, in honor to my dear country, as well as to fill the court with admiration.  I have some private reasons to believe that this visit from his majesty gave Flimnap an opportunity of doing me ill offices to his master.  That minister had always been my secret enemy, though he outwardly caressed me more than was usual to the moroseness of his nature.  He represented to the emperor the low condition of his treasury; that he was forced to take up money at a great discount; that exchequer bills[33] would not circulate under nine per cent, below par; that I had cost his majesty above a million and a half of sprugs (their greatest gold coin, about the bigness of a spangle); and, upon the whole, that it would be advisable in the emperor to take the first fair occasion of dismissing me.

[Illustration:  “THE HAPPINESS ...  OF DINING WITH ME.”  P. 76.]

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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,[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.  His speech was to the following effect, for I took notes of it as soon as he left me:—­