General Quesnel, it appears, had just left a Bonapartist club when he disappeared.

An unknown person had been with him that morning, and made an appointment with him in the Rue Saint-Jacques; unfortunately, the general's valet, who was dressing his hair at the moment when the stranger entered, heard the street mentioned, but did not catch the number." As the police minister related this to the king, Villefort, who looked as if his very life hung on the speaker's lips, turned alternately red and pale.

The king looked towards him.
"Do you not think with me, M.de Villefort, that General Quesnel, whom they believed attached to the usurper, but who was really entirely devoted to me, has perished the victim of a Bonapartist ambush ?" "It is probable, sire," replied Villefort.

"But is this all that is known ?" "They are on the track of the man who appointed the meeting with him." "On his track ?" said Villefort.
"Yes, the servant has given his description.

He is a man of from fifty to fifty-two years of age, dark, with black eyes covered with shaggy eyebrows, and a thick mustache.