This step was taken at the very moment when the storm had burst over La Vendée, when the fate of Nantes was trembling in the balance and the life of her citizens was most insecure. The act of adoption reads:[43] _Extract from the registers of births of the sections of La Halle and Jean Jacques of the commune of Nantes, department of the Loire inférieure, on the seventh of March, 1749, the second year of the Republic, one and indivisible, at ten o'clock in the morning._ Before us, Joseph Theulier, public officer, elected to determine the public status of citizens, have appeared in the town hall, Jean Audubon, commanding the war sloop _Cerberus_, vessel of the Republic, aged forty-nine years, native of Les Sables d'Olonne, department of La Vendée, and Anne Moinet his wife, aged fifty-eight years, native of the former parish of Saint-Leonard, of this commune, who, assisted by René Toussaint Julien Beuscher, manufacturer, aged twenty-five years, living in the section of La Halle, Rubens Street, and by Julien Pierre Beuscher, marine surgeon, aged twenty-four years, living in the section of La Fraternité, Marchix Street, and employed steadily in the said war sloop _Cerberus_, have declared before me that they do adopt and recognize from this moment as their lawful children, to wit: A male child named Fougère, born since their marriage, which took place on the twenty-fourth of August, 1772, in the commune of Paimbœuf, in this department, to him, Jean Audubon, and a woman living in America, who has been dead about eight years, and a female child, named Muguet, born also since the marriage aforesaid, to him and another woman living in America, named Catharine Bouffard, of whose fate he is ignorant. The two children being present, the first aged nine years, that will expire on the 22d of next April, the second aged seven years, that will also expire on the 26th of April next, and both having been born in America, according to this declaration that the witnesses above mentioned have signified as true, I have drawn up the present act, which the natural father and the mother by adoption, as well as their witnesses have signed, together with myself in this said day and year. It will be noticed that in this legally attested document, Bouffard, the true name of Muguet's mother, is given, while the name of the mother of Audubon is suppressed. It might therefore be inferred that the name Rabin, which appears later, was assumed, but as already remarked, such evidence is not conclusive.