into a profound sleep, and did not wake
until noon. As he was particularly hungry when he awoke, he ate and
drank heartily: and, as he was the neatest man at court, and was
expected by the neatest lady in England, he spent the remainder of the
day in dressing himself, and in making all those preparations which the
time and place permitted, without deigning once to look around him, or
to ask his landlord a single question. At last the orders he expected
with great impatience were brought him, in the beginning of the evening,
by a servant, who, attending him as a guide, after having led him for
about half an hour in the dirt, through a park of vast extent, brought
him at last into a garden, into which a little door opened: he was
posted exactly opposite to this door, by which, in a short time, he was
to be introduced to a more agreeable situation; and here his conductor
left him. The night advanced, but the door never opened.

Though the winter was almost over, the cold weather seemed only to be
beginning: he was dirtied up to his knees in mud, and soon perceived
that if he continued much longer in this garden it would all be
frozen. This beginning of a very dark and bitter night would have been
unbearable to any other; but it was nothing to a man who flattered
himself to pass the remainder of it in the height of bliss. However, he
began to wonder at so many precautions in the absence of a husband his
imagination, by a thousand delicious and tender ideas supported him
some time against the torments of impatience and the inclemency of
the weather; but he felt his imagination, notwithstanding, cooling by
degrees; and two hours, which seemed to him as tedious as two whole
ages, having passed, and not the least notice being taken of him, either
from the door or from the window, he began to reason with himself upon
the posture of his affairs, and what was the fittest conduct for him to
pursue in this emergency: "What if I should rap at this cursed door,"
said he; "for if my fate requires that I should perish, it is at least
more honourable to die in the house than to be starved to death in
the garden but then," continued he, "I may, thereby, perhaps, expose
a person whom some unforeseen accident may, at this very instant, have
reduced to greater perplexity than even I myself am in." This thought
supplied him with a necessary degree of patience and fortitude against
the enemies he had to contend with; he therefore began to walk