272 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



the case, I think few would find cause to blame him. 



When we view the whole subject in this double light, 

 of a duty owed to his family and of the possibility that 

 conflicting stories had come to him at an earlier day, 

 any embroidery or confusion which appears in many of 

 his statements of a personal nature can be better under- 

 stood. Such an explanation would be quite convincing 

 if payments had actually come to him from his own 

 mother's estate. 



We will only add that Mrs. Audubon, who seemed 

 to have shared her husband's intimate thoughts, ap- 

 parently believed to the last in his high birth. When 

 her younger son, John Woodhouse Audubon, lay at the 

 point of death, in February, 1862, she was summoned 

 to his bedside, but reached it too late to see him alive; 

 upon entering the room Mrs. Audubon is said to have 

 exclaimed: "Oh, my son, my son! to think that you 

 should have died without having known the secret of 

 your father's early life!" When asked by members of 

 her family to what she then referred, she turned their 

 questions aside, saying only that such remarks were 

 common in moments of intense grief and excitement. 



