It seems incredible that Audubon should not have heard of the death of his foster mother, since he had been devotedly attached to her in his youth and was moreover a beneficiary under her will. Yet on August 6, 1826, he wrote in his journal: "My plans now are to go to Manchester, to Derbyshire to visit Lord Stanley, Birmingham, London for three weeks, Edinburgh, back to London, and then to France, Paris, Nantes, to see my venerable stepmother, Brussels, and return to England." On September 30 of the same year he wrote from Liverpool: "I long to enter my old garden on the Loire and with rapid steps reach my mother,—yes, my mother! the only one I truly remember; and no son ever had a better, nor more loving one."[235] Again in 1828 he spoke of this estimable woman as if she were then alive, although she had been dead seven years. In Madame Audubon's last will, which was made in the July preceding her death, she left her property to be equally divided between her two adopted children, "Mr. Jean Audubon, called Jean Rabin, husband of Lucy Bakewell, and who I believe is at present in the United States of America, and to Rose Bouffard, wife of M. Gabriel Loyen du Puigaudeau, my son-in-law, who is living at Couëron"; she also took care to guard against the pretensions of any spurious heirs, and to make provision for her grandchildren in case of the death of either or both of her heirs direct. Having given the precise, if somewhat prosaic, recorded facts of the case, we will quote the story narrated by the naturalist's biographers, who never could have seen the legal documents and who thus had only hearsay and conjecture on which to build: At this juncture [of critical business affairs at Henderson], the father of Audubon died; but for some unfortunate cause he did not receive legal notice for more than a year. On becoming acquainted with the fact he traveled to Philadelphia to obtain funds, but was unsuccessful. His father had left him his property in France of La Gibitère [Gerbetière], and seventeen thousand dollars which had been deposited with a merchant in Richmond, Virginia. Audubon, however, took no steps to obtain possession of his estate in France, and in after years, when his sons had grown up, sent one of them to France, for the purpose of legally transferring the property to his own sister Rosa. The merchant who held possession of the seventeen thousand dollars would not deliver them up until Audubon proved himself to be the son of Commodore Audubon. Before this could be done the merchant died insolvent, and the legatee never recovered a dollar of his money.[236] [Illustration: AN OLD STREET IN THE COUËRON OF TO-DAY.] [Illustration: "LES TOURTERELLES," COUËRON, FINAL HOME OF ANNE MOYNET AUDUBON, AND THE RESTING PLACE OF EXACT RECORDS OF THE NATURALIST'S BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE.]