When, therefore, Monsieur Lépine told Monsieur Yves Durand, his chef de
Cabinet, that he must go out and find him a plaintiff, he added that he
himself knew of nobody who was likely to assume the rôle. The French
law gives no greater claim on the assets in such a case to the man who
goes to the expense of prosecuting than it affords to all the other
creditors, and as he has to put up funds for the prosecution, it is
often, as Monsieur Lépine explained, more than difficult to find a
victim ready to fleece himself after he has been fleeced. But Monsieur
Yves Durand happened to have heard that Monsieur Prevet was a likely
man to undertake the prosecution, and he called on him immediately.
He went first to his private house, failed to find him there, and
found him eventually at his office in the _Petit Journal_ building in
the Rue Lafayette. Monsieur Prevet told Monsieur Yves Durand that a
banker named Gaudrion was perfectly ready to prosecute Rochette, and
that he had mentioned his willingness to him. Monsieur Yves Durand and
Monsieur Prevet drove together immediately to the Rue de la Chaussée
d’Antin, where Monsieur Gaudrion had his office. They found Monsieur
Gaudrion there and he told them that although he was not ready to
prosecute Rochette himself, a friend of his, Monsieur Pichereau,
whom he described as a man of property living at Corbeil, was ready
to prosecute and would do so. Monsieur Pichereau, Monsieur Gaudrion
declared, had put £6000 into some of Rochette’s financial enterprises,
the Nerva Mines and Hella Gas Mantle Co. among others, had lost a good
deal of his money, and was ready to do everything possible to get some
of it back again.
At a quarter past two that afternoon, the afternoon of Friday, March
20, 1908, Monsieur Yves Durand returned to the Police Prefecture
and told Monsieur Lépine what he had done. Monsieur Lépine sent
Monsieur Yves Durand to the Procureur de la République, Monsieur
Monier (Monsieur Monier has been promoted since and is the high legal
authority whom Madame Caillaux consulted on the morning of the day
she shot Monsieur Calmette, as to the means of putting a stop to his
campaign against her husband), whom he was to advise of the existence
of a plaintiff ready to prosecute Rochette.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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