Mordecai interrupted him with a calm, self-confident voice. “Who says that self-defence is madness? Am I not, then, for self-defence? Do I desire, then, that we exterminate ourselves before the enemy attacks us? Do I wish, indeed, that we cease to be? Do I not yearn to rescue our people? Let our people defend itself; but the means of self-defence are various, and your way, Zerubbabel, is folly.” Zerubbabel stood there, looking at Mordecai as if he had not understood, and he asked, in great surprise, with a quivering voice, “How long has the self-defence of a people meant the pretty face of a young woman? Is Esther’s body our self-defence?” Again Mordecai replied calmly and confidently. “You understand by self-defence only the power of our arms, while I term self-defence the power of beauty and the power of money likewise. You are young, Zerubbabel, and surely you know the power of beauty. Say, is it not the surest way? The king’s heart can be purchased for us with beauty, and Esther must do it. Is not Esther my uncle’s daughter? Was she not to me even as my own child? Is she not the flesh and blood of all of us? And yet we told her to risk her life and go unbidden to the king; and should her beauty not win the king and should she as a consequence be put to death, then we will choose still another Jewish daughter,—one even more beautiful. And even if we should have to sacrifice all our Jewish daughters and sisters and wives, we will do so, despite the great grief it will cause us and the heaviness of the blow. Is not that, too, self-defence? And when our beauty has proved unsuccessful, we will defend ourselves with our money, with our possessions. Haman purchased us with ten thousand silver talents; then we can buy ourselves free for twenty, thirty, forty. From time immemorial these have been the surest means of self-defence. Was not our father Jacob freed from his brother Esau by his possessions? Did not also your great-great-grandfather, King Asa, save himself from Baasha, King of Israel, through bribing Benhadad, King of Aram? And did not Judith with her beauty rescue the Jews from Holofernes? _Your_ self-defence, on the contrary, is self-destruction. Small and few are we among the peoples of the hundred and seven and twenty provinces. Who will fear our weapons? Who will be impressed by our arms? And it may come to pass, moreover, that if the king learns that Jews are arming themselves, he will send against us his powerful army, trained in warfare; and there will not be a vestige left of our people. Would you have it thus, Zerubbabel?”