Adventure stories; Voyages around the world -- Fiction
It would be rash to predict how Passepartout’s lively nature would
agree with Mr. Fogg. It was impossible to tell whether the new servant
would turn out as absolutely methodical as his master required;
experience alone could solve the question. Passepartout had been a sort
of vagrant in his early years, and now yearned for repose; but so far
he had failed to find it, though he had already served in ten English
houses. But he could not take root in any of these; with chagrin, he
found his masters invariably whimsical and irregular, constantly
running about the country, or on the look-out for adventure. His last
master, young Lord Longferry, Member of Parliament, after passing his
nights in the Haymarket taverns, was too often brought home in the
morning on policemen’s shoulders. Passepartout, desirous of respecting
the gentleman whom he served, ventured a mild remonstrance on such
conduct; which, being ill-received, he took his leave. Hearing that Mr.
Phileas Fogg was looking for a servant, and that his life was one of
unbroken regularity, that he neither travelled nor stayed from home
overnight, he felt sure that this would be the place he was after. He
presented himself, and was accepted, as has been seen.
At half-past eleven, then, Passepartout found himself alone in the
house in Saville Row. He began its inspection without delay, scouring
it from cellar to garret. So clean, well-arranged, solemn a mansion
pleased him; it seemed to him like a snail’s shell, lighted and warmed
by gas, which sufficed for both these purposes. When Passepartout
reached the second story he recognised at once the room which he was to
inhabit, and he was well satisfied with it. Electric bells and
speaking-tubes afforded communication with the lower stories; while on
the mantel stood an electric clock, precisely like that in Mr. Fogg’s
bedchamber, both beating the same second at the same instant. “That’s
good, that’ll do,” said Passepartout to himself.
He suddenly observed, hung over the clock, a card which, upon
inspection, proved to be a programme of the daily routine of the house.
It comprised all that was required of the servant, from eight in the
morning, exactly at which hour Phileas Fogg rose, till half-past
eleven, when he left the house for the Reform Club—all the details of
service, the tea and toast at twenty-three minutes past eight, the
shaving-water at thirty-seven minutes past nine, and the toilet at
twenty minutes before ten. Everything was regulated and foreseen that
was to be done from half-past eleven a.m. till midnight, the hour at
which the methodical gentleman retired.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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