Esther now being at the Palace of the Persian Monarch, Mordecai considered it his duty to be near her, in order to watch over her as he did in the days of her youth--and for this purpose he took up his station in one of the King's gates. This enabled him to know all that was passing, without being particularly observed by those who frequented the Court. About this time a conspiracy was formed against the life of the King, by two of his attendants. Mordecai, having discovered the plot, made known the same to the King; an investigation took place, and the charge being fully sustained, the criminals were both executed, and the facts registered in the Persian records; but no other reward was given to Mordecai for his services. The King's Prime Minister, Haman, had contracted a strong antipathy against Mordecai, who refused to pay homage to him in the manner he had exacted from all the King's household. Not content to punish Mordecai alone, for his supposed want of respect to Haman's dignity, he resolved to extirpate the whole race from off the face of the earth; and in order to accomplish this atrocious design, Haman represents to the king that the Jews were a people different from the rest of the king's subjects, and very disobedient to his laws. The king relying on the truth of the statement made by his favorite minister, and he offering to pay into the king's treasury 10,000 talents of silver to pay necessary expenses, the king gave him the power to do as he thought proper; and Haman accordingly appointed a day for the total extermination of the whole Jewish nation. This affair took place in the twelfth year of the king's reign, and about five years after Ezra had received his commission to go to Jerusalem. Up to this period, none knew, not even the king himself, that queen Esther was a Jewess, for her cousin Mordecai had particularly enjoined her not to divulge her kindred, nor her nation. Strictly did Esther obey her cousin in everything that he conjured her; and the result was that her obedience to him, who was her second father and her natural guardian, proved to be the great contributing cause of her becoming the sole instrument in preventing her nation from being totally exterminated.