Thus the aspect of the courtier was calm, though sullen, while with his own hands he acted as chamberlain to the Jew and arrayed him in robes of royalty and honour.  We may imagine a group for a painter, in Haman, dark, malignant, and sullen—­and Mordecai, calm, proud, unbending, receiving service from his enemy.  And after having with his own hands arrayed the new object of royal favour, Haman was placed at the head of the proud war-horse, as he slowly bore the Jew through the multitude, who thronged the street “to behold the man whom the king delighteth to honour.”  We seem to see him—­the proudest, the most arrogant of men—­with bowed head and averted eye, while Mordecai sits erect and firm, in all the dignity of conscious worth.

As they slowly proceed through the thronged thoroughfare, obstructed by crowds who came to gaze upon the pageant, many a significant sneer or half-uttered jest would convey to Haman a sense of his degradation in appearing as the groom of the despised Jew.

When the ceremonies were over, Mordecai again appeared at the gates of the palace.  Nothing in the apparent condition of the two was changed, and the pageant may have seemed like a dream to Mordecai.  He was only anxious to know the proceedings and fate of Esther.  Yet he must have gathered hope for the future, as he still trusted and waited upon God.

But a dark cloud had fallen upon Haman.  He foreboded his doom.  He was humbled, disappointed, degraded, disgraced.  He had been paraded, before the multitudes, the menial of the Jew.  He had been forced to confer on the man he hated the very honours his soul most coveted.  “And Haman hasted to his house mourning and having his head covered.”  And he told his wife and the friends whom he had gathered to consult upon the fall of the Jew, all that had befallen him.  And clear, far-sighted, daring, and unscrupulous, the wife who had counselled Mordecai’s destruction, foretold to Haman his own doom.  “If Mordecai be of the Jews, before whom thou hast begun to fall, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shall surely fall before him.”

And they were probably counselling some measures for his personal safety; for when they were yet talking, came the king’s chamberlain, and hasted to bring Haman to the feast Esther had prepared.

As the feast proceeded, the king entreated Esther to ask some gift that he might bestow as a token of favour, or a pledge of affection.  And then Esther, with a simple fervour, force, and dignity, and with the pathos of true feeling, offered her supplication for herself and her nation.  “And Esther answered the king and said, If I have found favour in thy sight, O king! and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request.  For we are sold—­I and my people—­to be destroyed, to be slain, to perish.”  She quotes the words of Haman’s edict, and then adds, “But if we had been sold for bond-men and bond women, I had held my peace,