Page "René Artois" Paragraph 5

Meanwhile, the Colonel has uncovered some very valuable local artifacts, which he is hoping to sell after the war.

As the Gestapo are also looking for these items ( silver, a cuckoo clock and The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies ), René is forced into hiding the painting in his café on behalf of the Colonel.

When the Colonel finds out about René helping British airmen to escape, he threatens to have René shot ; in which case, René responds by saying that he will tell the Gestapo the whereabouts of the paintings.

Naturally, this brings about an agreement between the Colonel and René, who each turn a blind-eye to the dodgy activities of the other.

One more complication is that René has to spend almost the entire series posing as his own twin brother after he was ordered to be executed by General von Klinkerhoffen in an early episode.

Von Strohm had the execution detail's bullets swapped for blanks, but in order to keep up the pretence René had to spend the rest of his life pretending to be his brother, who also happened to be called René.