FOREWORD AND POSTSCRIPT lxiii 



was the "lost" or mislaid Dauphin, or suggest the palace of 

 Versailles, where Louis Charles was born, with forty or more 

 servitors around him with assignments directed mainly to the 

 care of the little prince, not to speak of his later governesses, 

 tutors, or teachers? John James was not Louis Charles! 



In the biographical sketch just referred to, supposed to 

 have been written about 1835, which, though edited by his 

 granddaughter, is replete with palpable errors, Audubon wrote 

 that "the precise period of my birth is yet an enigma to me." 

 He then spoke of his father going from Santo Domingo to 

 Louisiana, and there marrying a Spanish lady of beauty and 

 wealth, and of having three sons born to them, "I being the 

 youngest of the sons, and the only one who survived extreme 

 youth. My mother, soon after my birth [implying that he 

 was born in Louisiana], accompanied my father to the estate 

 (sic) of Aux Cayes, on the island of Santo Domingo, and she 

 was one of the victims of the ever to be lamented period of the 

 negro insurrection of that island." 



The evidence now available from a variety of sources points 

 more clearly than ever to the fact that the mother of Audubon 

 was a French Creole, Mademoiselle Rabin, of Santo Domingo, 

 where her children were all born, and that she was not married 

 to Audubon's father, who stated under oath in the act of adop- 

 tion that the mother of his son had died "about eight years" 

 pi-ior to March 7, 1794, the date of the signing of the act — 

 that is, in 1786, or one year after 1785, the year of the child 

 born to Mademoiselle Rabin as recorded in the Sanson bill. 

 Later items in the latter show that this child's mother was in 

 declining health, and tend to confirm Audubon's statement, 

 quoted above, that his mother had died shortly after his birth. 



In various extracts from Audubon's European journal, 

 written for the benefit of his wife, but not for the public, at 

 various times from 1826 to 1828, chiefly at Edinburgh and 

 Paris, he records a visit from the Countess of Selkirk, refers 

 to his high birth, to walking the streets of Paris like a common 

 man when he "should command all." He also refers to his 



