He appears to have spent his first years at the home of his maternal grandfather, a landowner, who lost his fortune through the dishonesty of a relative.

She then walked to Paris and found work with an old American lady on the rue des Trois Frères, halfway up the Montmartre hill, with a room in the attic.

Besson was enrolled in a school near the parish, where he was taught by Pierre-Célestin Roux-Lavergne, a friend of Philippe Buchez, with whom he had written the Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française.

At the start of 1833, when Besson was just seventeen, he was able to work with Souchon on a portrait of the Abbé Leclair that was exhibited at the Salon that year.

On 17 March 1833 the priest died and left a generous bequest which gave the mother and son financial freedom.

[2] Towards the end of June 1833 Souchon invited his pupil to accompany him and Xavier Sigalon to Italy to help prepare a copy of Michelangelo's painting of The Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel.

[3] Besson had a studio on the corner of Via Felice and Via della Purifazzione, which he shared with the landscape painter Louis-Nicolas Cabat (1812–1893).

[1] In the summer of 1839 Besson, Cabat and a few friends went on a sketching tour to Lake Albano, Ariccia, Civita Castellana and Foligno.

[1] In the spring of 1855 Besson was sent to Corsica to prepare a new monastery which could serve as a refuge for the order in Italy, which was threatened by revolutionary disturbances.

He then visited the monasteries in France, where the issue of strict observance was causing a division among the members of the order.

Besson was uncomfortable about the future of the Iraq mission of the French were to withdraw their consul, and afraid that the members would be victims of Muslim fanaticism.

The Pope gave him the power of a Prefect to try to get the French government to reverse their decision, and he succeeded in getting a vice-consul appointed in Mosul.

[1] Due to a violent disagreement between the heads of the two Iraqi Christian communities, the Chaldean and the Malabar Churches, the Holy See decided to send Besson back to Iraq with significant powers to try to settle the disputes.