80 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
In virtue of the power conferred upon us by the Central 
Committee, on the ninth of April we were transported to the 
parish of Couéron, where we arrived at seven o’clock in the 
morning. Proclamations were posted both at Couéron and at 
Port Launay close by, while some were sent across the river to 
Pellerin. We availed ourselves on this occasion of the services 
of two officers of a corsair, who demanded that we aid in re- 
moving from Pellerin four cannon with four-pound balls, and 
we succeeded in putting to flight a small barque and four 
men, who an hour later returned with cannon. . . . The parish 
of Couéron appears very tranquil, and is in a better mood than 
[at first] seemed to us. 
A little later Jean proceeded to Paimpceuf on a simi- 
lar errand. His letters to the citizen-administrators of 
that commune are dated at Nantes on the seventeenth 
of April and the fourteenth of May; in one of these he 
refers to “the sum of four hundred francs” due from 
the Administration “for one year’s rent of my house in 
calle Rondineau (da la calle rondino), which you have 
taken for a corps de garde” (see Vol. I, p. 32). 
In July and August of this second year of the Repub- 
lic, Citizen Audubon was sent to his native town of Les 
Sables d’Olonne to follow the movements of the loyalist 
generals Westermann and Boulart,’ a mission which 
*In the published orders and correspondence of the royalist General 
Boulart the following letter, given here in translation, is addressed to 
Citizen Audubon: “I give you notice, Citizen, that my aide-de-camp will 
arrive immediately from Niort. I beg you to do all in your power to 
come this evening to confer with me, since I have something to ask 
you of the utmost importance. I also inform you that there has arrived 
at Les Sables Citizen Anguis, the people’s representative. Perhaps it 
would be more advantageous that you should see him this evening, and 
that tomorrow early we attempt to bring all three together. You could 
depart in the morning for Nantes.” [Signed] “THe Generat Bovurarrt.” 
Jean Audubon filed this letter from the enemy with his Department, but his 
answer is not given. See Ch. L. Chassin, Etudes Documentaires sur La 
Révolution Francaise: La Vendée Patriote, 1793-1800, vol. ii, p. 306, t. 1-4 
(Paris, 1894-1895). 
