lxx AUDUBON THE NATURALIST 



difficulty support." If young Audubon had been the hereditary 

 king of France, Louis XVII, is it likely that Lieutenant Audu- 

 bon, then retired, in poor health, impoverished, receiving a 

 paltry annuity from the French Government of six hundred 

 francs, would have been expected to meet all the expenses of 

 sending a legal French king, though masquerading as his son, 

 to America and of maintaining him there? 



There was, to be sure, another reason why the retired sailor 

 and soldier wanted to get his son Fougere out of France at 

 that time, though he may not have wished to write it. The 

 young man was eligible for conscription. The need for "cannon 

 fodder" was soon to become acute all over France, for Napoleon 

 became emperor in 1804. Audubon himself told the secret at 

 a much later time, when going down the Ohio River in 1820. 

 On November 26 of that year he wrote: "The conscription 

 determined my father on sending me to America"; and he 

 added: "A young man of seventeen [eighteen], sent to America 

 to make money, for such was my father's wish." 



In his journal on March 15, 1827, at Edinburgh, Audubon 

 recorded a visit from the Countess of Selkirk, and thought it 

 strange that she should call upon him at his George Street 

 lodgings. "Did she know, I wonder," he wrote, "who I am 

 positively, or does she think that it is John J. Audubon, of 

 Louisiana, to whom she spoke? Curious event, this life of 

 mine !" It would be reasonable to suppose that the Countess 

 called on Audubon out of curiosity, since he was becoming 

 something of a social lion, and she had doubtless heard of this 

 genius from the backwoods of America from her nephew, Cap- 

 tain Basil Hall, who was one of Audubon's confidential friends. 

 Moreover, this friend was then planning to visit America and 

 was getting much useful information from the naturalist. 



On October 9, 1828, when in Paris, according to Mrs. Tyler, 

 Audubon wrote in his journal (and afterwards copied the entry 



