His own mother perished in a slave insurrection in St. Domingo, where the family had gone to live on the Audubon estate at Aux Cayes, when her child was but a few months old. Audubon says that his father with his plate and money and himself, attended by a few faithful servants, escaped to New Orleans. What became of his sister he does not say, though she must have escaped with them, since we hear of her existence years later. Not long after, how long we do not know, the father returned to France, where he married a second time, giving the son, as he himself says, the only mother he ever knew. This woman proved a rare exception among stepmothers--but she was too indulgent, and, Audubon says, completely spoiled him, bringing him up to live like a gentleman, ignoring his faults and boasting of his merits, and leading him to believe that fine clothes and a full pocket were the most desirable things in life. This she was able to do all the more effectively because the father soon left the son in her charge and returned to the United States in the employ of the French government, and before long became attached to the army under La Fayette. This could not have been later than 1781, the year of Cornwallis' surrender, and Audubon would then have been twenty-one, but this does not square with his own statements. After the war the father still served some years in the French navy, but finally retired from active service and lived at La Gerbétière in France, where he died at the age of ninety-five, in 1818. Audubon says of his mother: "Let no one speak of her as my step-mother. I was ever to her as a son of her own flesh and blood and she was to me a true mother." With her he lived in the city of Nantes, France, where he appears to have gone to school. It was, however, only from his private tutors that he says he got any benefit. His father desired him to follow in his footsteps, and he was educated accordingly, studying drawing, geography, mathematics, fencing, and music. Mathematics he found hard dull work, as have so many men of like temperament, before and since, but music and fencing and geography were more to his liking. He was an ardent, imaginative youth, and chafed under all drudgery and routine. His foster-mother, in the absence of his father, suffered him to do much as he pleased, and he pleased to "play hookey" most of the time, joining boys of his own age and disposition, and deserting the school for the fields and woods, hunting birds' nests, fishing and shooting and returning home at night with his basket filled with various natural specimens and curiosities. The collecting fever is not a bad one to take possession of boys at this age.