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Updated: June 4, 2025
Ahasuerus, surrounded by his councillors, bends forward, and touches with his sceptre the head of the kneeling Esther. His figure is very like that of the David in the foregoing picture. On the right is a fine back view of one of the characteristic swaggering soldiers in tight striped clothes. The treatment is broad, but the drawing in parts is somewhat careless.
Then the king Ahasuerus answered and said unto Esther the queen, "Who is he, and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do so?" And Esther said, "The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman." Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen.
The word "banquet" occurs twenty times in this short story and only twenty times in all the remaining thirty-eight books of the Old Testament. In other words, Ahasuerus and his trencher-mates ate and drank as much in five days as had been eaten and drunk by all the other Old Testament characters from "Genesis" to "Malachi."
And when Haman saw that Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence, then was Haman full of wrath. 6. And he thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone; for they had showed him the people of Mordecai: wherefore Haman sought to destroy all the Jews that were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, even the people of Mordecai. 7.
Then were the king's scribes called, and there was written according to all that Haman had commanded, unto the king's lieutenants, governors and rulers of every province, and to every people in the kingdom after their own language. And it was written in the name of King Ahasuerus and sealed with the king's ring.
The song had as yet but fairly commenced, when a break in the 'piff-paff' chorus warned Andreas that he was losing influence, women and men were handing on a paper and bending their heads over it; their responses hushed altogether, or were ludicrously inefficient. "I really believe the poor brute has come to a Christian finish this Ahasuerus of steinbocks!" said the duchess.
In the midst of their consultations, the king's chamberlain came to attend Haman to the banquet prepared by Esther. He goes but rather like a man led to execution, than one invited to a festival. But he must conceal his chagrin, and assume the smile of gayety. Having partook of the feast, Ahasuerus requires of Esther the fulfilment of her promise, in the explanation of her wishes.
The cushions among which he sat had come from Constantinople, the rug at his feet from Tiflis, the prayer-rug on the wall from Mecca. All that he saw was as unlike what he had known in past years as though he had come to Mars or Jupiter. All that he had heard recalled to him his first readings in the Old Testament the story of Nebuchadnezzar, of Belshazzar, of Ahasuerus of Ahasuerus!
He felt himself to be the most privileged being in all the wide realm governed by Ahasuerus. Filled with arrogant self-sufficiency, he passed by Mordecai, who not only refused to give him the honors decreed in his behalf, but, besides, pointed to his knee, inscribed with the bill of sale whereby Haman had become the slave of Mordecai.
What was it that was taken? And dimly before Belasez's mental eyes a picture seemed to grow, in which a king upon his throne, and a woman fainting, were the principal figures. Esther before Ahasuerus! That was it, of course. And Belasez sprang up, with a determination to search through her father's books, and to find the picture which had been taken from Anegay's face.
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