CHAPTER VIII

MADAME MIDAS STRIKES 'ILE'


Aesop knew human nature very well when he wrote his fable of the old
man and his ass, who tried to please everybody and ended up by
pleasing nobody. Bearing this in mind, Madame Midas determined to
please herself, and take no one's advice but her own with regard to
Vandeloup. She knew if she dismissed him from the mine it would give
colour to her husband's vile insinuations, so she thought the wisest
plan would be to take no notice of her meeting with him, and let
things remain as they were. It turned out to be the best thing she
could have done, for though Villiers went about Ballarat accusing
her of being the young Frenchman's mistress, everyone was too well
aware of existing circumstances to believe what he said. They knew
that he had squandered his wife's fortune, and that she had left him
in disgust at his profligacy, so they declined to believe his
accusations against a woman who had proved herself true steel in
withstanding bad fortune. So Mr Villiers' endeavours to ruin his
wife only recoiled on his own head, for the Ballarat folk argued,
and rightly, that whatever she did it was not his place to cast the
first stone at her, seeing that the unsatisfactory position she was
now in was mainly his own work. Villiers, therefore, gained nothing
by his attempt to blacken his wife's character except the contempt
of everyone, and even the few friends he had gained turned their
backs on him until no one would associate with him but Slivers, who
did so in order to gain his own ends. The company had quarrelled
over the unsuccessful result of Villiers' visit to the Pactolus, and