It is evident from the narrative that the king had not even taken the trouble to inquire the name of the people he had given up to extermination any more than he had troubled himself to reward the man who had saved his life. In both cases he goes on blindly, and is indebted to mere chance for his discoveries. We see in all this the same passionate, childish nature that is recorded of Xerxes by Herodotus when he scourged the sea for destroying his bridge of boats. When Haman comes back to his house after his humiliating public exposure, his wife comforts him after a fashion that has not passed out of use with her. "If that Mordecai," she says, "is of the seed of the Jews before whom thou hast begun to fall, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shall surely fall before him." And now Haman and the king and Esther are once more in a secluded apartment, banqueting together. Again the king says to her, "What is thy request, Esther?" The hour of full discovery is now come. Esther answers: "If I have found favor in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let _my life_ be given me at my petition, and my people at my request. For we are sold, I and my people, to be slain and to perish. If we had only been sold to slavery, I had held my tongue." Then the king breaks forth, "Who is he, and where is he that durst presume in his heart to do so?" And Esther answered, "The adversary and enemy _is this wicked Haman_!" Then Haman was afraid before the king and queen, and he had the best reason to be so. The king, like an angry lion, rose up in a fury and rushed out into the gardens. Probably at this moment he perceived the net into which he had been drawn by his favorite. He has sent orders for the destruction of this people, to whom his wife belongs, and for whom she intercedes. Of course he never thinks of blaming himself. The use of prime ministers was as well understood in those days as now, and Haman must take the consequences as soon as the king can get voice to speak it. Haman, white with abject terror, falls fainting at the feet of Esther upon the couch where she rests, and as the king comes raging back from the gardens he sees him there. "What! will he force our queen also in our very presence?" he says. And as the word went out of the king's mouth, they covered Haman's face. All is over with him, and an alert attendant says: "Behold the gallows, fifty cubits high, that he made to hang Mordecai, the saviour of the king's life." Then said the king, "Hang him thereon." Thus dramatically comes the story to a crisis. Mordecai becomes prime minister. The message of the king goes everywhere, empowering the Jews to stand for their life, and all the governors of provinces to protect them. And so it ends in leaving the nation powerful in all lands, under the protection of a queen and prime minister of their own nation.