While these employed the day, the games of chance, the wine, the music, the movements of the degraded dancing-girl, and the tricks of the buffoon and the jester, amused the late hours and varied the festive scenes of the night. The feast was drawing to a close, and, at the termination of this long season of hilarity, Ahasuerus extended the pleasures of the occasion to all classes of his subjects at Shushan. He threw open his palaces and pleasure-grounds, his parks and gardens--always of vast extent around eastern palaces--and admitted all the citizens to a feast prepared for them. Tents had been erected within the precincts of the palace for the tables--and these tents were furnished with all the luxurious appendages of the east--with white and green and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and marble pillars; while the beds--the couches around the tables, against which the ancients reclined--were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red and blue, and black and white marble; while they gave them to drink in vessels of gold. Until these last days the princes and nobles alone had participated in the festive scenes; but now, as we have said, all ranks were allowed to share, and the citizens of Shushan, subjects of Ahasuerus, thronged the palace and trod the royal gardens, and, entering the tents, enjoyed all that royalty could offer in ancient Persia--far surpassing in costly splendour and elegance the entertainments of modern courts. And surely the monarch must have had strong confidence in the security of his government and the loyalty of his people, as he thus from day to day, for successive days, flung open to them the recesses of his palace.