AFTER AN OIL PORTRAIT PAINTED BY THE AMERICAN ARTIST POLK, AT PHILADELPHIA, ABOUT 1789, NOW IN POSSESSION OF MRS. MORRIS FRANK TYLER. PUBLISHED BY COURTESY OF MISS MARIA R. AUDUBON.] Having been appointed a Civil Commissioner by the Directory of the Department on January 17, 1793, Citizen Audubon was sent to Savenay, a town of some importance twenty-five miles to the northwest of Nantes. His instructions on this mission were to gather useful information on the civil, moral and political state of the district, "in order to bring a remedy," and to administer the oath of allegiance to all administrative and judicial bodies. Jean began operations without delay, and his report, which was kept in journal form and embraces the period from January 19 to September 10, 1793, is an interesting document; it covers fifty-one large foolscap pages, written now in a fine and again in a bold, regular hand, in the course of which his characteristic signature[65] occurs no less than twenty-two times, each section of the report having been signed as completed. In one section of this journal he wrote: "Our operations having been finished, we assembled around the tree of liberty, and there sang the hymn of the Marseillaise, which was interrupted with frequent shouts of '_Vive la république!_,' '_Vive la nation!_,' and more than one charge of musketry." [Illustration: ONE OF JEAN AUDUBON'S SIGNATURES IN HIS REPORT TO THE DIRECTORY, 1793. From the original in the archives of the préfecture at Nantes.] Jean Audubon with eight others was charged with organizing the National Guard in the canton of Pellerin, and ordered to accompany the detachment that marched to the relief of Pornic, March 27, 1793. The Citizen was busy also in other directions. He said in his report: In virtue of the power conferred upon us by the Central Committee, on the ninth of April we were transported to the parish of Couëron, where we arrived at seven o'clock in the morning. Proclamations were posted both at Couëron 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 removing 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 Couëron appears very tranquil, and is in a better mood than [at first] seemed to us. A little later Jean proceeded to Paimbœuf on a similar 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 (_à la calle rondino_), which you have taken for a _corps de garde_" (see Vol. I, p. 32).