96 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
a friend, suddenly nipped his plans in the bud; he was 
ordered, he said, aboard a pontoon, then lying in port, 
and there was obliged to remain until his father, who 
was absent at the time, finally released him, “not without 
a severe reprimand.” The following record, written 
long after, is reminiscent of this period: “This day 
twenty-one years since I was at Rochefort in France. 
I spent most of the day at copying letters of my father 
to the Minister of the Navy. . . . What has happened 
to me since would fill a volume. . . . This day, January 
first, 1821, I am on a keel boat going down to New 
Orleans, the poorest man on it.” 
Audubon’s stay at Rochefort, the date of which is 
no doubt correctly given in the journal just quoted, was 
Jestined to be short. After a year he returned to Nantes, 
and later to “La Gerbetiére,” where as before he spent 
all of his leisure in roaming the fields and looking for 
birds, their nests, their eggs and their young. At about 
this time, when fifteen years of age, Audubon began 
to make a collection of his original drawings of French 
birds, which was greatly extended in 1805 and 1806. 
He has recorded that at the behest of his foster moth- 
er, who was an ardent Catholic, he was confirmed in that 
Church when “within a few months of being seventeen 
years old”; he was surprised and indifferent, but “took 
to the catechism, studied it and other matters pertaining 
to the ceremony, and all was performed to her liking.” 
Since no record of this act has been found, it is probable 
that the ceremony in question was confused with that 
of his baptism, which, as we have noticed, occurred on 
October 23, 1800, six months before he attained his 
sixteenth birthday. 
After having seen something of the character of Au- 
dubon’s early training in France, it will not be surpris- 
