But times were hard and money scarce, and for awhile Girard added very little to his means.  Yet his keen eye was sharply watching for golden opportunities, and his active mind busily thinking how to create or improve them.  In 1780, circumstances made trade with New Orleans and San Domingo very profitable.  He promptly engaged in it, and in two years doubled his resources.

Peace being restored, Girard, full of faith in the future of his adopted country, leased a block of stores for ten years at a very low rent.  The following year, while business still lay stunned by the blows it had received during the war, he obtained a stipulation from his landlord, giving him the right to renew his lease for a second ten years, if he chose to demand it, when the first one should expire.  This was an act of judicious foresight.  When, at the expiration of the first lease, he visited his landlord, that gentleman, on seeing him enter his counting-room, said: 

“Well, Mr. Girard, you have made out so well by your bargain that I suppose you will hardly hold me to the renewal of the lease for ten years more.”

“I have come,” replied Gerard, with a look of grim satisfaction, “to secure the ten years more.  I shall not let you off.”

Nor did he.  And the great profits he derived from that fortunate lease greatly broadened the foundation of his subsequently colossal fortune.

As yet, however, his wealth was very moderate, for in 1790, at the dissolution of a partnership he had formed with his brother who had come to America, his own share of the business amounted to only thirty thousand dollars.  And yet, forty years later, he died leaving a fortune of ten millions.

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,