In July and August of this second year of the Republic, Citizen Audubon was sent to his native town of Les Sables d'Olonne to follow the movements of the loyalist generals Westermann and Boulart,[66] a mission which could hardly have been agreeable if, as seems to have been the case, some of his own people were loyal to the old _régime_. Correspondence by sea between Les Sables and Nantes, which was open before the siege, was not broken at this time, for the royalists had named one of their representatives, Benoit, as a delegate "to fraternize with the citizens of Nantes, to invite the authorities to correspond, and beg them to send food if they had more than they required." Four of Jean's letters, dated at Les Sables on the fifth and eighth of July and the sixth of August, besides one from La Rochelle on the fourteenth of July, all addressed to the Administration of the Loire inférieure, have been preserved. In the manuscript records of the Department for 1793 is found also a notice of Jean's appointment as Special Commissioner, with a memorandum of all the money paid to reimburse him for the expenses of his numerous journeys. Thus, it is noted that he had been paid 145 francs for a service of twenty-nine days, which would represent the modest allowance of a dollar a day. Another item shows that he had received 100 francs for a tour of ten days; a note which was added to this item to explain the Directory's sanction for the payment of another forty-five francs and ten sous reads as follows: "by its order of the sixth of March last, the Council had, in effect, named Citizen Audubon as its Commissioner, to visit the coasts and to secure signatures, with full power to treat with all people, to acquire materials for the navy and other objects of his mission; if this mission did not prove successful, it was solely through force of circumstances, and not from any lack of zeal on his part."[67]