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About the middle of the twelfth century, the abbey of Tournus, in Burgundy, had, at Louhans, a little port where it collected salt-tax, whereof it every year distributed the receipts to the poor during the first week in Lent. Girard, count of Macon, established a like toll a little distance off. The monks of Tournus complained; but he took no notice.
Under the provisions of the Girard trust fund nearly five hundred dwelling houses have been erected by the city in South Philadelphia, all heated and lighted by a central plant operated by the trustees, and more than seventy million tons of coal have been mined on property belonging to his estate.
By 1780 he was again in the shipping trade, his vessels plying between American ports and New Orleans and San Domingo; not the least of his profits, it was said, came from slave-trading. A troublous partnership with his brother, Captain Jean Girard, lasted but a short time; the brothers could not agree. At the dissolution in 1790 Stephen Girard's share of the profits amounted to $30,000.
Girard and Astor were the superfine products of this system; they did in a greater way what others did in a lesser way. As a consequence, their careers were fairly well illumined. The envious attacks of their competitors ascribed their success to hard-hearted and ignoble qualities, while their admirers heaped upon them tributes of praise for their extraordinary genius. Both sets exaggerated.
"He's simply refused, up to the present, to tell what he was doing between twelve o'clock and the time he was found, except to say that he walked for a good while before going to the house where Girard afterwards found him.
We only taste our bitterest grief when the mind has shaken itself aloof from the present woe, to travel forward and question what the future can hold for us, now that our life is bereft of this treasure. Madeline's condition, after the departure of Olive Girard, was an exponent of this truth.
"I've been coming in on a later train every morning and going out again on a very much later one at night. I'm back in town on the paper for a while." "Why don't you settle down to something worth while?" asked Justin, with the reserved disapproval of the business man for any mode of life but his own. "Settle down to this kind of thing?" said Girard thoughtfully.
Marie Antoinette stood within the door, Bergeron and Girard at the foot of the bed, and the cure spoke very clearly and firmly. Vaillantcoeur rolled on his pillow and turned his face away. Then he sat up in bed, grunting a little with the pain in his shoulder, which was badly set. His black eyes snapped like the eyes of a wolverine in a corner. "Forgive?" he said, "no, never. He is a coward.
A woman lifted us down, shook the straw on our dresses, and gave us some milk to drink. I heard her say to père Chicon, "You really think their father will take care of them, then?" Père Chicon shook his head, and knocked his pipe against the table. Then he made a funny face and said, "He may be anywhere. Young Girard told me he had met him on the Paris road."
That popular belief that we are "born in sin and conceived in iniquity," Girard once said was true in his case, at least. Yet so wondrous are the works of God, the hate and brutality visited upon their child went into the making of his strong and self-reliant character. He never said, "My mother's religion is good enough for me."
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