Rochette then made a vicious attack on Monsieur Prevet and the _Petit Journal_, but vicious though his attack was, it was distinctly plausible. “A shareholder of the _Petit Journal_ called on me,” he said. “He brought some very interesting figures with him. These figures showed that in 1901 the shareholders of the _Petit Journal_ got £2 dividend and the shares were worth £44 to £48. In 1902,” he said “Monsieur Prevet became director and six years afterwards, at the beginning of 1908, the shares were worth from £10 to £12 and the dividend was only sixteen shillings! This drop in value was not due to a general slump in the newspaper industry, for the _Petit Parisien_, the _Journal_, and the _Matin_, all of them halfpenny morning papers, had increased the value of their respective properties enormously.” Rochette’s visitor maintained, Rochette declared to the Commission, that if Monsieur Prevet’s management was disastrous to the _Petit Journal_ shareholders, the fact was largely due to Monsieur Prevet’s need of money, which was notorious. Rochette went, he said, into the question of the _Petit Journal’s_ next dividend. He saw, he declared, that it was problematical, and he therefore “inspired,” though he did not write, the circular which had been sent to the _Petit Journal_’s shareholders. “With regard to Monsieur Prevet’s action at this time,” says Rochette, “if he really wanted to protect the interests of his shareholders and not his own, all he had to do would have been to send out a private circular of his own to the shareholders, a list of whose names was in his possession, and convince them that my statements were wrong. He couldn’t, of course, do this, because my statements were right, and that is why he was afraid that I should take his position on the paper from him at the next general meeting. That is also why I was arrested just before that general meeting. The shares had to be deposited at the office of the _Petit Journal_ for voting purposes about March 19. Monsieur Prevet was able to convince himself that his authority with the shareholders had dwindled, and he thought it safer for himself to get rid of me.”