58 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
story proceeds we shall see that she was a most kind, 
if over-indulgent, foster mother, and became excessively 
proud of her handsome boy. “The first of my recol- 
lective powers,” said the naturalist when writing of him- 
self in 1835,° “placed me in the central portion of the 
city of Nantes . . . where I still recollect particularly 
that I was much cherished by my dear stepmother .. . 
and that I was constantly attended by one or two black 
servants, who had followed my father to New Orleans 
and afterwards to Nantes.” 
Jean Audubon, who spent a good part of his life at 
sea and in a country almost totally devoid of morals, 
must be considered as the product of his time. He was 
better, no doubt, than many who made greater profes- 
sions, better certainly than a Rousseau, who gave excel- 
lent advice to parents upon the proper methods of 
rearing their children but sent his own offspring to 
orphan asylums. As most men have their faults, said 
the son, the father “‘had one that was common to many 
individuals, and that never left him until sobered by a 
long life”; but, he added, “as a father, I never com- 
plained of him; his generosity was often too great, and 
his good qualities won him many desirable friends.” 
Whatever his faults, Jean Audubon was just, generous 
and possessed of a kind heart. He was in reality a truer 
father than many who give their children their name 
but deny them sympathy and a wise oversight. Jean 
at various times at No. 5, rue de Gigant, and in the rue des Carmes, 
where his wife possessed a house, as well as in the rue des Fontenelles 
and the rue Saint-Leonard. Very likely “La Gerbetitre” at Couéron was 
occupied intermittently, especially in summer, after the outbreak of the 
Revolution and his reverses in fortune; even after his retirement there in 
1801, he still kept a lodging (pied-d-terre) at Nantes, where, as it chanced, 
he died, though it was not his usual stopping-place. See Note, Vol. I, p. 86. 
8See Maria R. Audubon, dudubon and His Journals (Bibl. No. 86), 
vol. i, p. 8. 
