It is not improbable that he was one of those unfortunate
beings who desire to be loved, but whose temper and appearance combine
to repel affection. His marble statue, which adorns the entrance to
the principal building, if it could speak, might say to us, "Living,
you could not understand nor love me; dead, I compel at least your
respect." Indeed, he used to say, when questioned as to his career,
"Wait till I am dead; my deeds will show what I was."
Girard's recollections of his childhood were tinged with bitterness.
He was born at Bordeaux in 1750. He was the eldest of the five
children of Captain Pierre Girard, a mariner of substance and
respectability. He used to complain that, while his younger brothers
were taught at college, his own education was neglected, and that he
acquired at home little more than the ability to read and write. He
remembered, too, that at the age of eight years he discovered, to his
shame and sorrow, that one of his eyes was blind,--a circumstance that
exposed him to the taunts of his companions. The influence of a
personal defect, and of the ridicule it occasions, upon the character
of a sensitive child, can be understood only by those whose childhood
was embittered from that cause; but such cases as those of Byron and
Girard should teach those who have the charge of youth the crime it is
to permit such defects to be the subject of remark.
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