The managing director of the _Petit Journal_, the powerful member of the Senate, Monsieur Prevet, was naturally very much annoyed and somewhat alarmed by these manœuvres, and took legal action to put a stop to them. He commenced a prosecution against a “person or persons unknown,” by which euphemism of course Rochette was indicated, for the purpose of putting a stop to the disloyal manœuvres by which Monsieur Rochette was rapidly obtaining a large number of shares and powers of attorney from discontented shareholders. Monsieur Prevet realized that unless some such immediate action were taken it was more than possible that at the general meeting of the _Petit Journal_ Company on April 5, 1908, the discontented shareholders either in person or by proxy would oust him, Monsieur Prevet, from his position as managing director of the _Petit Journal_, and would hand over the control of this newspaper with its enormous influence and immense phalanx of readers to the financier Rochette. Monsieur Prevet occupied a very high position. He was not only the managing director of the _Petit Journal_, he was not only a member of the Senate, but he was actually, at that time, the “rapporteur” or advisory summariser for the Senate on the big question of the purchase by the State of the Western Railway. It is a curious sidelight on the Rochette affair that this financier who had begun his career five years before with a capital of £2000 was the principal mover in the immense agitation against the acquisition by the State of the Western Railway of France. That he moved in this matter on purely personal grounds is of far less importance than the fact that if he had succeeded in overthrowing Senator Prevet the French nation would undoubtedly have been spared a very heavy money loss, for the acquisition by the State of the Western Railway has been a disastrous undertaking from a money point of view, and has cost and will continue to cost French taxpayers a large sum of money every year till the railway begins, if it ever does begin, to pay. Rochette’s attacks on Monsieur Prevet, and his obvious intentions on the _Petit Journal_ created a storm of antagonism against him in the French Press.