of
their liquor a reasonable draught. Their mutton yields to ours, but
their beef is excellent. I have had a sirloin so large, that I have been
forced to make three bites of it; but this is rare. My servants were
astonished to see me eat it, bones and all, as in our country we do the
leg of a lark. Their geese and turkeys I usually ate at a mouthful, and
I confess they far exceed ours. Of their smaller fowl I could take up
twenty or thirty at the end of my knife.

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 ate more than usual,
in honour 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 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."

I am here obliged to vindicate the reputation of an excellent lady, who
was an innocent sufferer upon my account. The treasurer took a fancy to
be jealous of his wife, from the malice of some evil tongues, who
informed him that her grace had taken a violent affection for my person;
and the court scandal ran for some time, that she once came privately to
my lodging. This I solemnly declare to be a most infamous falsehood,
without any grounds, further than that her grace was pleased to treat me
with all innocent marks of freedom and friendship. I own she came often
to my house, but always publicly, nor ever without th