watching over the sick or dying, or some chance-beam betraying a late
carousal. In the palace, the soft footfall of the attendants in the
antechambers, could not disturb the slumbers of the monarch, while
strains of sweetest music were ready to lull him to repose, as warder
and sentinel kept watch over his safety. But still "that night the king
could not sleep;" and wakeful, restless, solitary, he commanded his
attendants to bring him the archives of his kingdom, and read to him
the records of his reign. Strange request! How few monarchs would care
thus to review the past, and force themselves to the judgment awaiting
them from a higher tribunal and from future ages!

It was not chance which held the eyes of the king waking. It was not
chance which drew his attention to the conspiracy defeated by Mordecai,
and to the investigation of the treatment he had received for so high a
service. No reward, no honour had been conferred upon one who had saved
the life of the sovereign. A strange forgetfulness or neglect of the
prime minister of the realm! While Ahasuerus was devising some mode of
requiting the obligation due to one who had rendered the state important
service, he called for a counsellor, and was told that Haman was
without, in the court.

Haman left the banquet of Esther in all the assurance of royal favour.
He had attained to honours which distinguished him above all the
subjects of the Persian empire. He had received distinctions which
elevated him above even the princes and nobles of the kingdom; and in
his pomp and power he passed, with his train of attendants, menials,
flatterers, and followers, through the gates of the royal palace, "the
observed of all observers;" and as he came into the thronged
thoroughfare that led from the royal abode, all did him homage and
showed him reverence--save one.