The way was now clear to Esther, and so the next day, at the banquet, as the king repeated his former offer, she, reclining on the couch, her chiseled form and ravishing beauty inflaming the ardent monarch with love and desire, said in pleading accents: "I ask, O king, for my life, and that of my people. If we had all been sold as bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my tongue, great as the evil would have been to thee." The king started, as if stung by an adder, and with a brow dark as wrath, and a voice that sent Haman to his feet, exclaimed: "Thy life! my queen? Who is he? where is he that dare even harbor such a thought in his heart? He who strikes at thy life, radiant creature, plants his presumptuous blow on his monarch's bosom." "That man," said the lovely pleader, "is the wicked Haman." Darting one look of vengeance on the petrified favorite, he strode forth into the garden to control his boiling passions. Haman saw at once that his only hope now was in moving the sympathies of the queen in his behalf; and approaching her, he began to plead most piteously for his life. In his agony he fell on the couch where she lay, and while in this position the king returned. "What!" he exclaimed, "will he violate the queen here in my own palace!" Nothing more was said; no order was given. The look and voice of terrible wrath in which this was said, were sufficient. The attendants simply spread a cloth over Haman's face, and not a word was spoken. Those who came in, when they saw the covered countenance, knew the import. It was the sentence of death. The vaulting favorite himself dare not remove it--he must die, and the quicker the agony is over, the better. In a few hours he was swinging on the gallows he had erected for Mordecai. After this, the queen's power was supreme--every thing she asked was granted. To please her he let his palace flow in the blood of five hundred of his subjects, whom the Jews slew in self-defence. For her he hung Haman's ten sons on the gallows where the father had suffered before them. For her he made Mordecai prime minister, and lavished boundless favors on the hitherto oppressed Hebrews. And right worthy was she of all he did for her. Lovely in character as she was in person, her sudden elevation did not make her vain, nor her power haughty. The same gentle, pure, and noble creature when queen, as when living in the lowly habitation of her cousin, generous, disinterested, and ready to die for others, she is one of the loveliest characters furnished in the annals of history. It is a little singular that the words, God or Providence, are not mentioned in the whole book of Esther. The writer seems studiously to have avoided any reference to them, as if he did not wish to recognize the interposition of Heaven in any of the events that transpired; while his narrative is evidently designed to teach nothing else. The hand of Providence is everywhere seen managing the whole scheme.