I first asked a keeper of the records whether he knew any one who had seen the King, and assisted to arrest him?
He mentioned Colonel Réné Besson.
I asked him to give me his address.
“I will do better,” said he,—“I will take you to him.”
At the very moment that we entered by the Rue de l’Horloge, that place where Louis XVI was arrested, which, singularly enough, has the shape of the axe of the guillotine, my guide put his hand on my shoulder.
“Eh!” said he; “here is the very man we want.”
And he showed me, at the corner of the Place Latry and the Rue de la Basse, a fine old man, warming himself in the rays of the sun, and sitting in a large arm-chair before his door.
It was Colonel Réné Besson.
We drew near to him.
Imagining that we had some business with him, he arranged himself more comfortably in his chair, and waited an explanation.