On Friday (it is quite a curious coincidence that so many important dates of the Caillaux, Agadir, and Rochette affairs should have fallen on a Friday)—on Friday, March 20, 1908, at exactly twenty minutes to twelve in the forenoon, Monsieur Clemenceau, the Prime Minister, sent for Monsieur Lépine, who was then Prefect of Police, and ordered him to take measures for a judicial inquiry into Rochette’s financial transactions. Monsieur Lépine spent exactly a quarter of an hour with Monsieur Clemenceau in his room at the Home Office in the Place Beauvau, and at five minutes to twelve he returned to the Police Prefecture, sent for Monsieur Mouquin, the head of the Research Department of the Paris police, and for Monsieur Yves Durand, his chef de Cabinet, and told them what Monsieur Clemenceau had said to him. Now the French have a way of their own of conducting these matters. The State does not prosecute for fraud. Monsieur Lépine’s orders were to find a plaintiff who would bring a charge against Rochette, who would show proof that Rochette had damaged his pocket, and who would be willing to pay the caution which the French courts require from such a plaintiff before legal action begins. Monsieur Yves Durand was ordered by Monsieur Lépine to go out and find such a plaintiff. Monsieur Lépine, in his examination by the Parliamentary Commission on July 26, 1911, was very explicit with regard to his own opinion and the opinions he had heard expressed on Rochette’s financial undertakings. He alluded to them as “a house of cards built on puffs of hot air, kept afloat by public credulity and bound to fall to pieces at the first breath of suspicion.” Monsieur Lépine had urged the judicial authorities to take action in the Rochette case long before action was taken, and he alluded with some bitterness to the difficulty in getting a serious charge brought against any financier suspected of fraud who was rich enough to make it worth the while of his creditors to withdraw such charges. There had been several charges made against Rochette, and they had all fallen through because the plaintiffs got their money or got money enough to induce them to withdraw.