THE ENIGMA OF AUDUBON'S LIFE 271 



chelle," who is said to have been a politician. 15 In some 

 of the passages which we do not quote, the naturalist 

 would have his family believe that he was of noble birth, 

 that his adoptive father was not his true father, and 

 that both he and Lieutenant Audubon had received 

 irremediable injury through the treachery of the mys- 

 terious uncle, "Audubon of La Rochelle." Now these 

 strange statements of the naturalist, though not in 

 accord with the facts as they are known to us, should be 

 interpreted, I believe, in the light of possible stories that 

 may have come to him in the glamour of his youth; his 

 mind may have been diverted by them, he may have 

 believed them, but of this nothing now can positively 

 be known. To continue our conjectures, it is possible 

 that the plain conflict between these supposititious tales 

 and the facts that were revealed at his adoption, his 

 baptism, and in the wills of his father and stepmother, 

 as well as by the lawsuit which followed the former's 

 death, all led him to resort to "enigma." We should 

 also remember that the naturalist, who was careless of 

 dates and historical facts, had finally left his home at 

 the age of twenty, when young men as a rule are not 

 curious about their family history, and that he reached 

 the reminiscent stage late in life. It seems probable 

 that the wording of his father's will and the later at- 

 tempt to annul it finally induced him to wash his hands 

 of the whole matter, even to breaking off relations with 

 his family in France. Feeling, as undoubtedly he did, 

 that public knowledge of those conditions, for which 

 he was in no way responsible, might be a bar to all 

 future aspirations, he was not loath to let the matter 

 rest, so far as he and his immediate family were con- 

 cerned, under a cloak of mystery. If such were in truth 



15 See Note, Vol. I, p. 27. 



