264 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



ever had a better, nor more loving one." 4 Again in 

 1828 he spoke of this estimable woman as if she were 

 then alive, although she had been dead seven years. 



In Madame Audubon's last will, which was made in 

 the July preceding her death, she left her property to 

 be equally divided between her two adopted children, 

 "Mr. Jean Audubon, called Jean Rabin, husband of 

 Lucy Bakewell, and who I believe is at present in the 

 United States of America, and to Rose Bouffard, wife 

 of M. Gabriel Loyen du Puigaudeau, my son-in-law, 

 who is living at Coueron"; she also took care to guard 

 against the pretensions of any spurious heirs, and to 

 make provision for her grandchildren in case of the 

 death of either or both of her heirs direct. 



Having given the precise, if somewhat prosaic, re- 

 corded facts of the case, we will quote the story nar- 

 rated by the naturalist's biographers, who never could 

 have seen the legal documents and who thus had only 

 hearsay and conjecture on which to build: 



At this juncture [of critical business affairs at Henderson], 

 the father of Audubon died; but for some unfortunate cause 

 he did not receive legal notice for more than a year. On be- 

 coming acquainted with the fact he traveled to Philadelphia to 

 obtain funds, but was unsuccessful. His father had left him his 

 property in France of La Gibitere [Gerbetiere], and seven- 

 teen thousand dollars which had been deposited with a mer- 

 chant in Richmond, Virginia. Audubon, however, took no steps 

 to obtain possession of his estate in France, and in after years, 

 when his sons had grown up, sent one of them to France, for 

 the purpose of legally transferring the property to his own 

 sister Rosa. The merchant who held possession of the seventeen 

 thousand dollars would not deliver them up until Audubon 



4 Maria R. Audubon, Audubon and his Journals (Bibl. No. 86), vol. i, 

 pp. iii and 130. 



