for me to go out at it; and the windows, vulgarly called the
eyes, were so closely pulled down by the fingers of a nurse, that
I could by no means open them. At last I perceived a beam of
light glimmering at the top of the house (for such I may call the
body I had been inclosed in), whither ascending, I gently let
myself down through a kind of chimney, and issued out at the
nostrils.

[1] Some doubt whether this should not be rather 1641, which is
a date more agreeable to the account given of it in the
introduction: but then there are some passages which seem to
relate to transactions infinitely later, even within this year or
two. To say the truth there are difficulties attending either
conjecture; so the reader may take which he pleases.


No prisoner discharged from a long confinement ever tasted the
sweets of liberty with a more exquisite relish than I enjoyed in
this delivery from a dungeon wherein I had been detained upwards
of forty years, and with much the same kind of regard I cast my
eyes[2] backwards upon it.

[2] Eyes are not perhaps so properly adapted to a spiritual
substance; but we are here, as in many other places, obliged to
use corporeal terms to make ourselves the better understood.


My friends and relations had all quitted the room, being all (as
I plainly overheard) very loudly quarreling below stairs about my
will; there was only an old woman left above to guard the body,