QUEEN ESTHER ACCUSES AMAN.

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877. Queen Esther obtains her petition. Aman is hung on the gallows he had built for Mardochai.

So the king and Aman went in, to drink with the queen. And the king said to her again the second day, after he was warm with wine: "What is thy petition, Esther, that it may be granted thee? and what wilt thou have done ? although thou ask the half of my kingdom, thou shalt have it." Then she answered: "If I have found favour in thy sight, O king, and if it please thee, give me my life for which I ask, and my people for which I request. For we are given up, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. And would God we were sold for bondmen and bondwomen: the evil might be borne with, and I would have mourned in silence: but now we have an enemy, whose cruelty redoundeth upon the king.' And king Assuerus answered and said: "Who is this, and of what power, that he should do these things?" And Esther said: "It is this Aman that is our adversary and most wicked enemy." Aman hearing this was forthwith astonished, not being able to bear the countenance of the king and of the queen. But the king being angry rose up, and went from the place of the banquet into the garden set with trees. Aman also rose up to entreat Esther the queen for his life, for he understood that evil was prepared for him by the king. And when the king came back out of the garden set with trees, and entered into the place of the banquet, he found Aman was fallen upon the couch on which Esther lay, and he said: "He will

force the queen also in my presence, in my own house." The word was not yet gone out of the king's mouth, and immediately they covered Aman's face. And Harbona, one of the officers that stood waiting on the king, said: "Behold the gibbet which he hath prepared for Mardochai, who spoke for the king, standeth in Aman's house, being fifty cubits high." And the king said to him: Hang him upon it." So Aman was hanged on the gibbet, which he had prepared for Mardochai; and the king's wrath ceased.

Mardochai was now called, and received from the king the ring which he had commanded to be taken away from Aman; for Esther had confessed to the king that Mardochai was her uncle, and Esther threw herself before the king and entreated that the letters given to Aman might be reversed by new letters, saying: "How can I endure the murdering and slaughter of my people?" The king assented that letters should be written, and sent signed with the king's seal throughout his dominions, empowering the Jews to defend themselves, it being contrary to the laws of the kingdom directly to reverse a decree of the king. And when the 13th day of the month, Adar came, the princes and governors, knowing Mardochai to be a

EXPLANATION OF THE TYPE OF ESTHER.-Esther the Queen is a type of the intercessory power of the Blessed Mother of God in the Court of the King of Heaven, her Divine Son. Esther saved her people by her intercession, and placed her life on the cast of a die, in order to ward off impending death from those for whom she pleaded. "Who knoweth that thou art not therefore come to the kingdom, that thou mightest be ready for such a time as this?" said Mardochai to Queen Esther. The Blessed Mary has not been raised from low estate to be the Queen of Heaven, without having many gifts and graces, which she can obtain for those on earth who show something like the same faith in her intercession as Mardocha showed in the intercession of Queen Esther in the court of Assuerus.

Jew, and a prince of the palace, in great power, everywhere favoured the Jews, so that when they were attacked, instead of being overcome, the Jews made a great slaughter of their enemies and killed them,

AMAN IS HUNG UPON THE GALLOWS HE HAD MADE FOR MARDOCHAI.

repaying according to what they had prepared to do to them. And when the danger was over, Mardochai and Esther wrote letters, that the 14th and 15th days