Haman left the presence of the queen glad, and with a joyful heart. Honoured as no other subject had been honoured, the spirit of the Amalekite was lifted up with pride. He approached the gate at which Mordecai still sat. Surely now the firmness of the Jew will give way; he will yield reverence at last to one who has so fearfully shown his disposition to revenge, and his power to gratify it. No! Mordecai stoops not, and the tyrant passes on, full of rage against one whom he may kill, but whom he cannot conquer.
On what a slight thread hangs human happiness, when such a breath can destroy it! Haman had all that the world could give, but one evil passion, like a viper in the breast, poisoned in a moment every spring of enjoyment. He went to his home a miserable man—so miserable, that he was constrained to publish to others what was humiliating to himself. Haman called for his friends, and Zeresh his wife, and told them of the glory of his riches, the multitude of his children, the favour of his sovereign, and the repeated invitations with which Esther the queen had honoured him; closing all with this striking confession of the vanity of earthly greatness—“Yet all this availeth me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the gate of the king!”
Zeresh appeared a meet counsellor for so unprincipled a man as her husband. She and her friends assured Haman that the object of his hate could be easily destroyed, without waiting for the day appointed for the massacre. “Let a gallows be made fifty cubits high,” said they, “and tomorrow speak thou unto the king that Mordecai may be hanged thereon; then go thou merrily unto the banquet.”
The wicked counsel pleased Haman, and he caused the gallows at once to be made.
CHAPTER III.
CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF ESTHER.
Persian Records—Malice Defeated—Pleading of Esther—Punishment of Haman—Triumph of the Jews.
That night King Ahasuerus could not sleep. Those peaceful slumbers which the meanest of his subjects could enjoy, fled from the eyelids of the monarch. It does not appear, however, that the rest of the despot was destroyed by any thought of the thousands of innocent families doomed by his caprice to destruction. Unable to obtain sleep, the king ordered that the book of records should be brought and read before him; and as he listened to the account of the events of his reign, the conspiracy of his servants, and the means by which the dangerous plot had been discovered, were brought to the remembrance of the monarch.