Phileas Fogg—Jean Passepartout

The relationship between Phileas Fogg and Jean Passepartout begins with a search for domestic order and becomes a bond tested by extraordinary travel. Fogg hires a servant who longs for a settled life, but their first days together quickly overturn that expectation: the exacting master announces that they are going round the world. As the journey exposes Fogg’s outwardly unreadable composure to danger and sacrifice, Passepartout discovers a heart beneath it and grows devoted to him.

A Hiring Built on Contrasting Expectations

When Fogg asks whether his prospective servant is French and named John, the newcomer corrects him: he is Jean Passepartout. He explains that his surname has followed him through a succession of occupations, including itinerant singing, circus riding, tightrope dancing, gymnastics instruction, and firefighting in Paris. Having left France five years earlier, he has since sought a place in England where he might exchange a restless working life for domestic tranquillity. His varied past gives him physical skill and practical experience, but his immediate purpose is not another adventure: he hopes to forget even the name Passepartout and settle into a dependable household. Fogg offers the kind of regularity Passepartout thinks he has been seeking. Before applying, Passepartout has served in ten English houses without taking root. He has found his employers whimsical and unsettled, often travelling or pursuing adventure, and left his last position after objecting mildly to his master’s conduct. By contrast, he has heard that Fogg neither travels nor stays away overnight. The match therefore begins with an apparent convergence: one man wants an orderly household, the other a quiet master. Yet the very steadiness that attracts Passepartout is about to be tested by a journey on a global scale. The hiring itself establishes the relationship’s terms in miniature. Fogg notices that Passepartout is four minutes slow and, after identifying the error, declares that the new servant is in his service from that exact moment. He then departs without a word. Passepartout is left alone in the house on Saville Row as both Fogg and the departing predecessor have shut the street door. The master’s precision and reserve are immediately legible; emotional intimacy is not. Their connection starts as an exact appointment rather than a personal welcome.

The Journey Reverses the Promise of Routine

Passepartout’s first understanding of the arrangement collapses when he asks whether Fogg is going to leave home. Fogg replies that they are going round the world. Passepartout opens his eyes wide, raises his eyebrows, and holds up his hands in stupefied astonishment. His reaction marks the distance between the tranquil service he expected and the extraordinary undertaking into which he has been hired. Fogg gives the information without apparent drama; Passepartout’s body registers the shock that his master’s manner does not show. The contrast persists aboard the Mongolia in the Red Sea. When winds from the African or Asian coast make the long ship roll fearfully, other passengers retreat below and music and dancing cease. The vessel nevertheless presses onward towards the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. Fogg does not display anxiety, seldom goes on deck, and passes through the scene with the same impassive manner associated with the Reform Club. He continues his four meals and plays whist with enthusiasm. The episode sharpens the difference between Fogg’s outward composure and the tumultuous conditions around him; it also shows the form of companionship that the voyage initially allows, with Passepartout serving within a journey whose pace and purpose his master sets. In Bombay, Fogg’s attention remains fixed on transit rather than sightseeing. After leaving the Mongolia, he gives Passepartout errands and urges him to be at the station at eight, while he himself walks to the passport office with a step compared to an astronomical clock. The city’s landmarks and cultural sites do not divert him. This episode makes the practical structure of their relationship concrete: Fogg determines the schedule, and Passepartout receives tasks within it. Their shared route does not mean that they experience each place in the same way or share the same priorities.

Danger Reveals Passepartout’s Attachment

A decisive change comes when Fogg undertakes a bold and difficult rescue. The project may be impracticable and risks his life, or at least his liberty, as well as the success of the tour. He does not hesitate, and Sir Francis Cromarty joins him as an ally. Passepartout, too, is ready for whatever is proposed. More importantly, he sees in his master’s action a heart and soul beneath what he had taken to be an icy exterior. The danger changes his reading of Fogg: the reserved employer is no longer merely a model of punctuality but a man willing to endanger himself for another. After the exploit succeeds, Passepartout laughs at the strange part he has played. Fogg tells him that he has done well, praise that carries unusual weight because it comes from so sparing a speaker. Passepartout answers that the credit belongs to Fogg; he says he had only been struck by a queer idea. His laughter also turns on the absurdity of having briefly been the spouse of a charming woman and a venerable, embalmed rajah. The scene links their growing closeness to both action and recognition: Passepartout has risked himself in the undertaking, while Fogg acknowledges his contribution, and Passepartout responds not by claiming the honour but by assigning it to his master. The narrator makes the emotional consequence explicit: Passepartout begins to love Phileas Fogg. That attachment is not presented as the outcome of a long exchange of confidences. It emerges from witnessing what Fogg does when duty calls, in sharp contrast to the cold exterior that had defined their earliest encounters. Their bond is still shaped by the master-servant hierarchy, but it has acquired a personal depth that the original employment agreement could not explain.

Service, Separation, and the Bond’s Limits

The relationship continues to combine loyalty with practical dependence. When the party reaches Yokohama, Passepartout goes ashore alone, uncertain what to do, without a penny in his pocket, though his passage has been paid in advance. He wanders through the city without a plan and finds himself among a mixed crowd of merchants and travellers, feeling profoundly alone. This episode shows the vulnerability of the servant when separated from the journey’s central group and from Fogg’s direction. It does not erase his attachment, but it places that attachment alongside the material insecurity of his position: Passepartout must improvise when circumstances leave him on his own. Across these episodes, Fogg and Passepartout are joined less by similarity than by a developing recognition. Fogg supplies structure, commands, and the fixed pace of the journey; Passepartout brings physical resourcefulness, surprise, and an increasingly personal allegiance. At first, Fogg’s regularity seems to promise the quiet life Passepartout wants. The world tour makes that promise impossible, but gives the servant evidence of the character behind the routine. Their relationship consequently shifts from a precise transaction toward mutual esteem, most clearly in Fogg’s rare praise and Passepartout’s readiness to act for him. The journey’s scale tests their service bond, while the rescue reveals why Passepartout’s loyalty becomes more than obedience.