Chapter XXXIX: Appendix

"Hiram, King of Tyre, to Manasseh, son of Ioiada, son of Eliashib, High Priest of Jehovah in Samaria: Greeting!

"Health and the blessing of thy God be with thee! Our hearts are cheered by the tidings of thy prosperity. May thy temple rise speedily from the heights of Gerizim! Gado, the bearer of this letter, is most famed among our architects. He bears our royal commission to abide with thee so long as his skill pleases thy purpose. He carries with him a thousand minas, a contribution from our treasury to the worship of thy God. He will also present to thee a fabric of our finest workmanship, which has been wrought upon by the hands of Zillah, our Queen beloved, in which she desires that thou shalt enwrap the copy of thy Law, as thou art thyself enwrapped in our affection."

Should the reader desire to know more of the affairs of Manasseh, let him read the histories of one Josephus the Jew. And should his interest be great to learn of the subsequent career of Hiram and his beautiful queen, the faithful chronicler would refer him to the source whence he himself has derived his information. In the Museum of the Louvre is a stone coffin, in which once lay the body of Ezmunazar, King of Sidon. The sarcophagus bears this imprecation: "I adjure every royal personage that he open not this chamber, nor remove this coffin, lest the holy gods destroy that royal personage and his offspring forever." They who esteem themselves wise in such matters tell us that this prophetic curse was recently fulfilled in the misfortunes that fell upon the house of the late Emperor of the French, Napoleon III., in the reign of which "royal personage" this coffin was robbed of its contents and brought to Paris. But though the body of Ezmunazar is no longer in it, if one will listen intently at the ear-hole in the coffin, one will find it as full of historic suggestions as a conch-shell is of news from the bottom of the sea.

THE END.

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