It is sad; but may be profitable to know, that his happiness did not
increase with his possessions. While his balance-sheets recorded
increasing assets, his hearth-stone echoed louder and wilder echoes of
discordant voices. He was jealous, arbitrary, and passionate; his
unfortunate wife was resentful, fiery, and finally so furious that, in
1790, she was admitted as a maniac to an insane hospital, which she
never left until she was carried to her grave, unwept and unregretted,
twenty-five years after. Their only child had gone to an early grave.
Girard's nature must have been strangely perverted if he counted, as he
seems to have done, the pleasure of making money a compensation for the
absence of true womanly love from his cheerless fireside. His heart, no
doubt, was as unsentimental as the gold he loved to hoard.
The terrible retribution which about this time overtook the
slave-holders of St. Domingo, when their slaves threw off their
oppressive yoke, added considerably to his rising fortunes. He happened
to have two vessels in that port when the tocsin of insurrection rang
out its fearful notes. Frantic with apprehension, many planters rushed
with their costliest treasure to these ships, left them in care of their
officers, and went back for more. But the blood-stained hand of massacre
prevented their return. They and their heirs perished by knife or
bullet, and the unclaimed treasure was taken to Philadelphia, to swell
the stream of Girard's wealth.
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