I have been at Jerusalem, where the occurrence that I shall describe took place, and the whole scene came vividly before me while I was going over the site of the ancient Temple and climbing the towers of the king’s palace.
Here is old Athaliah, the queenly murderess.
She ought to have been honorable. Her father was a king. Her husband was a king. Her son was a king. And yet we find her plotting for the extermination of the entire royal family, including her own grandchildren.
The executioner’s knives are sharpened; the palace is red with the blood of princes and princesses. On all sides are shrieks, and hands thrown up, and struggle and death groan. No mercy! Kill! Kill!
But while the ivory floors of the palace run with carnage and the whole land is under the shadow of a great horror, a fleet-footed woman—a clergyman’s wife, Jehosheba by name—stealthily approaches the imperial nursery, seizes upon the grandchild that had, somehow, as yet escaped massacre, wraps it up tenderly but in haste, snuggles it against her, flies down the palace stairs—her heart in her throat, lest she be discovered in this Christian abduction.
Get her out of the way as quickly as you can, for she carries a precious burden—even a young king.
With this youthful prize she presses into the room of the ancient Temple, the church of olden time, unwraps the young king and puts him down, sound asleep as he is, and unconscious of the peril that has been threatened; and there for six years he is kept secreted in that church apartment.
Meanwhile, old Athaliah smacks her lips with satisfaction and thinks that all the royal family are dead.