92 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



agreeable talents, and he might have stored up much 

 had not the continental wars in which France was then 

 engaged forced him from school at an early age, when, 

 much against his will, he entered the navy as midship- 

 man, at Rochefort. This naval experience terminated, 

 as he then recorded, in 1802, during the short peace 

 between England and France; he was then seventeen 

 years of age. 1 This was the year following his father's 

 retirement, and the year previous to his first independent 

 visit to the United States. 



More details of this early period were given later, 

 when the naturalist spoke with great affection of his 

 foster mother, to whom his education had been mainly 

 entrusted. "Let no one speak of her as my step-moth- 

 er," said he; "I was ever to her as a son of her own flesh 

 and blood, and she was to me a true mother." His every 

 idle wish was gratified, he tells us, and his every whim 

 indulged, in accordance with the notion that fine clothes 

 and full pockets were all that were needed to make the 

 gentleman: "She hid my faults, boasted to every one 

 of my youthful merits, and, worse than all, said frequent- 

 ly in my presence, that I was the handsomest boy in 

 France." 



If Madame Audubon broke the prevailing tradition 

 and by going to the other extreme did her best to spoil 

 this affectionate boy, some allowance must be made for 

 parental over-indulgence. In 1793, when the future 

 naturalist was eight years old, the public buildings of 



1 Audubon said that he was at the time fourteen years old, which 

 could not have been the case, but when writing in 1835 he placed this 

 experience at shortly before his return to America, which would have 

 been in the winter of 1805-6; "I underwent," to quote this later account, 

 "a mockery of an examination, and was received as a midshipman in the 

 navy, went to Rochefort, was placed on board a man-of-war, and ran a 

 short cruise. On my return, my father had in some way obtained pass- 

 ports for Rozier and me, and we sailed for New York." 



