326 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
so hard pressed was he at times to eke out a subsistence 
for them both. Yet Audubon was as sanguine as ever, 
and on November 9 he recorded the resolution “to paint 
one hundred views of American scenery,” and added: 
“T shall not be surprised to find myself seated at the 
foot of Niagara,” a prediction which was fulfilled in 
the following year. 
During the winter spent at Shippingport, Audubon 
lost a gentle friend in Madame Berthoud,” the mother 
of Nicholas. In his journal for January 20, 1824, we 
read his emotional words: 
I arose this morning by the transparent light which is the 
effect of the moon before dawn, and saw Dr. Middleton passing 
at full gallop towards the white house; I followed—alas! my 
old friend was dead! . . . many tears fell from my eyes, ac- 
customed to sorrow. It was impossible for me to work; my 
heart, restless, moved from point to point all round the com- 
pass of my life. Ah Lucy! what have I felt to-day! ... I 
have spent it thinking, thinking, learning, weighing my 
thoughts, and quite sick of life. I wished I had been as quiet 
as my venerable friend, as she lay for the last time in her 
room. 
* This lady had a remarkable history. She was the widow of the 
Marquis de Saint Pie, and was at one time a dame d’honneur of Queen 
Marie Antoinette; like many others of noble birth, she had fled from Paris 
during the Revolution, and emigrated to America, where with her husband 
she assumed the name of Berthoud. Her son, Nicholas Augustus, had 
married Mrs. Audubon’s sister, Eliza Bakewell, in 1816. 
