When Mordecai saw what was done, he rent his clothes and put on
sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city and cried
with a loud and bitter cry. He published--he could not conceal--his
grief and terror; and his crafty foe perhaps exulted in his misery. The
long struggle between the Amalekite and the Israelite seemed now to be
concluded. The fall of the Jews seemed to be sealed. All the power of
the Persian empire was arrayed against them. They were prisoners in her
different provinces, appointed to execution! All human power and
authority and presumption of success was on the side of Haman, and
against his intended victims.

Mordecai had no hope on earth. His trust was alone in the God of his
fathers--the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob--the God often
defied by Amalek. In his distress he presented himself, clothed in
sackcloth, at the gate of the royal palace; but no one arrayed in the
garb of sorrow might enter the haunts devoted to luxurious pleasure. Yet
the sight of his distress and the tones of his deep grief arrested the
attention of the attendants of the queen, and her chamberlain reported
the circumstances to her.

No tokens of sympathy, no expression of condolence, however grateful,
could assuage the grief of Mordecai in this hour of terror and alarm;
and even though commanded by the queen, he declined to lay aside the
tokens of wo, while he diligently sought to convey to the secluded
Esther an account of all the machinations of Haman, and the assurance of
the imminent danger to which her nation was exposed, and in which she
was involved. He not only sent her a copy of the edict which condemned
the Jews, but he charged her to supplicate the king on their behalf.