Before telling how he left the kingdom, Gulliver says he should first explain a private intrigue that had been forming against him for two months.
He had lived all his life far from courts. His humble station had never fitted him for them. He had heard and read enough about the ways of great princes and ministers. But he never expected to meet such terrible effects of them in so remote a country, governed, he thought, by very different principles from Europe’s.
One night, as he is getting ready to visit the emperor of Blefuscu, a great man at court comes to his house in secret, in a closed chair. Gulliver had once helped him when he lay under the emperor’s heavy displeasure. He asks to be let in without sending up his name.