Passepartout

Passepartout is Phileas Fogg’s French servant and the journey’s most improvisational presence: a former acrobat whose practical resourcefulness repeatedly puts him in danger, but also reconnects the travellers when separation seems decisive. His path from errand-running companion to performer, rescuer, captive, and finally the bearer of the crucial news about the date gives the novel’s tightly measured itinerary a very different rhythm from Fogg’s composure. Where Fogg meets disruption with outward stillness, Passepartout responds with movement—and, at the end, with the discovery that time itself has been miscounted.

Identity and Place in the Journey

On the Mongolia, the contrast between master and servant is already legible in the ship’s passage through the Red Sea. As the vessel rolls in the wind, other passengers abandon music and dancing, but Fogg gives no outward sign of anxiety and seldom goes on deck. Passepartout belongs to a journey governed by that calm timetable, yet his later adventures show how little the timetable can account for the accidents and improvisations that keep the party moving. The evidence presents him not as a second version of Fogg but as a more exposed, physically responsive traveller, repeatedly obliged to adapt to circumstances as they arrive.

The difference becomes especially clear when the passengers reach Bombay. They go ashore at half-past four in the afternoon, with the train to Calcutta due to leave at eight. Fogg says goodbye to his whist partners, gives Passepartout several errands, and tells him to be at the station on time. Fogg himself keeps to his precise routine, walking to the passport office and declining to visit Bombay’s landmarks. The exchange establishes Passepartout’s practical position in the party: Fogg sets the schedule, while his servant is entrusted with tasks that connect the plan to the immediate demands of travel.

The novel places that episode within an account of India’s political geography. It distinguishes the much larger territory of India from British India proper, describes the Crown’s authority over much of the country, and recounts the East India Company’s earlier expansion before its possessions passed to the Crown. That setting makes the travellers’ movement more than a succession of train departures: they are crossing a country described through changing political control and racial distinctions. Passepartout’s own encounters, however, are rendered at street level, through the practical problem of finding his way and making a living.

Separation and Improvisation in Yokohama

When Passepartout reaches Yokohama aboard the Carnatic, he is alone and has no money—not even a penny. His passage has been paid in advance, and he has several days to decide what to do next. He eats generously, including food that he imagines must serve for himself, Fogg, and Aouda, but his appetite does not solve the question of what comes after the voyage. At dawn on the thirteenth, the ship enters a busy port serving mail steamers and travellers between North America, China, Japan, and the surrounding islands. The scale and international traffic of the harbour sharpen the contrast between the connected port and Passepartout’s personal isolation.

He goes ashore timidly and wanders without a plan. The first district he encounters is European in appearance, with low-fronted houses and verandas; its streets, squares, docks, and warehouses are crowded with people of many origins, including merchants ready to trade. Yet the mixed crowd does not make him feel at home. He feels as alone among it as if he had been dropped into an entirely unfamiliar world. His movement through Yokohama is therefore not that of a confident tourist choosing sights, but of a stranded traveller looking for a way to continue.

That search brings him to the Long Noses, an unfamiliar performing company whose act depends on long bamboo noses attached to the performers’ faces. The announced finale is a human pyramid in which fifty performers are to represent the Car of Juggernaut, balancing one group above another on the artificial noses. When the troupe needs someone to fill the base role left vacant by a departed performer, Passepartout is selected because the part requires strength and agility. His former acrobatic experience, a skill that might otherwise belong to his past, becomes an immediate means of earning food.

He puts on a costume with coloured wings and fastens a six-foot false nose to his own. The performance proceeds through successive tiers until the human structure reaches the theatre’s cornices. Just as the orchestra begins a deafening air and applause fills the room, the pyramid loses its balance and collapses. Passepartout has abandoned his place: he clears the footlights, climbs to the right-hand gallery, and falls at the feet of a spectator whom he recognizes as his master. The precarious employment that has kept him fed ends in a sudden reunion with Fogg. His escape from the troupe’s role does not come by a planned route; it comes through the same acrobatic agility that first made him useful to it.

Courage, Capture, and Rescue

On the Pacific Railroad, Passepartout’s physical skill takes on higher stakes. During the Sioux raiders’ attack on the train, the conductor is shot while fighting beside Fogg. He warns that unless the train is stopped within five minutes, the passengers are lost. Fogg prepares to leave the car, but Passepartout volunteers to go in his place. Before Fogg can stop him, he slips under a car without being noticed by the attackers.

He works his way beneath the moving train while the fight continues overhead. Holding the chains, using the brakes and the edges of the carriages, and moving from one car to the next, he draws on his old acrobatic training in a new and dangerous setting. He reaches the forward end of the train, where he is suspended by one hand between the baggage-car and the tender. The passengers are able to stop the train near Kearney station, and soldiers from the fort drive off the attackers. But when everyone is counted on the platform, Passepartout is missing. The man who has helped save the train has not himself arrived safely with it.

His absence turns the rescue into a second expedition. Fogg marches out at the head of a party, and later returns with Passepartout and two other travellers, all rescued from the Sioux raiders. The encounter had taken place ten miles south of Fort Kearney. Before Fogg and the soldiers reached them, Passepartout and his companions had begun to fight their captors; Passepartout had felled three attackers with his fists. He is thus neither a passive captive nor a rescuer whose courage makes him invulnerable. He helps stop the train, disappears in the aftermath, fights when captured, and finally depends on Fogg’s decision to come after him. The reunion makes their loyalty reciprocal: Passepartout has risked himself for the party, and Fogg risks time and the promised reward to bring him back.

The Final Errand and the Gained Day

After the travellers reach London, Fogg sends Passepartout to arrange the services of the Reverend Samuel Wilson for a marriage ceremony planned for the following day. Passepartout sets off delighted. The clergyman is not at home, however, and Passepartout waits about twenty minutes before leaving. By then it is thirty-five minutes past eight, and he runs back to Saville Row with disordered hair and no hat, overturning passers-by in his haste. The errand has seemed routine; the journey back becomes a race against the deadline that governs Fogg’s wager.

Back in Fogg’s room, Passepartout is so breathless that he cannot speak at first. When he learns that the day is Saturday, he insists that Fogg has made a mistake: they arrived twenty-four hours ahead of time, and only ten minutes remain. He seizes his master by the collar and drags him from the house. Fogg, carried into action without time to think, takes a cab, promises the driver a hundred pounds, and reaches the Reform Club after a reckless dash through the city.

The final reversal depends on Passepartout’s hurried message and on his recognition of the calendar. Travelling east has given the party an extra day, but that fact can matter only when someone notices it and acts before the remaining minutes expire. Passepartout’s last decisive contribution is not an acrobatic feat or a physical rescue; it is the alertness to understand what the date means and the force to make Fogg move. Across the journey, his bodily agility and his loyalty have repeatedly bridged gaps that the itinerary cannot anticipate. At its end, his urgent run converts a missed appointment into the news that restores Fogg’s chance of winning.