The Jews learned of all that had been planned and a great terror descended upon them; their fright knew no bounds. They raised a loud and bitter cry, rent the clothes upon them and put on sackcloth with ashes. They sought counsel but found it not. Who would save them from certain death? Where should they turn and whither should they go? Where could they hide and whither might they flee? In their great terror and in their great misfortune they raised their eyes to Queen Esther. Esther must help them,—Esther, the Jewish daughter upon the royal throne. And Mordecai, her cousin, turned to her, asking that she go to the king and make supplication to him for her people. Esther could not make up her mind, because whosoever came unbidden before the king was put at once to death, and she had not been summoned to him for thirty days. Mordecai sent sharp words to her. “Think not that you of all the Jews will escape because you are in the king’s house. For if you altogether hold your peace, then shall help and deliverance come to the Jews from another place; but you and your father’s house shall be destroyed; and who knows but that you ascended to royal power for just such a time as this?” Then Esther bade them return Mordecai this answer: “Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day; I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and then will I go in to the king, despite the law. And if I perish, I perish.” Mordecai went his way and did according to all that Esther had commanded him. The Jews assembled in their meeting-house in Shushan, weeping, fasting, wailing and hoping in Esther. And when any one opened the door and came in, he was greeted with tear-stifled voices: “What says Esther? What does Esther? What news of Esther?” III But Zerubbabel, when he learned of Haman’s decree, neither rent his garments nor covered his head with ashes. His locks spread even more spiritedly over his neck and his eyes blazed with a wild wrath. His hands rolled up into iron fists and he fluttered them in the air like the wings of an eagle. He raised his voice, and it was like the voice of thunder. “Oh, they shall regret it! The Jewish people is to them a shattered heap, easy to destroy and to annihilate, a mob without rights, to whom each may do as he pleases. But they will learn that it is not as they have imagined. They will pay too dearly for every Jewish life, and our defeat will be their greatest disaster. They shall regret it! They shall regret it!”