William Batulcar

William Batulcar is the impresario of a Japanese troupe whose temporary engagement of Passepartout turns an improvised disguise into a brief route toward San Francisco. He first provides Passepartout with work and a possible passage across the Pacific; later, after a performance collapses, his demand for damages brings Phileas Fogg into the troupe’s story as well.

The troupe and its establishment

Batulcar runs a company of mountebanks, jugglers, clowns, acrobats, equilibrists, and gymnasts. The placard at his establishment advertises its last performances before it leaves Japan for the United States, making the troupe a departing attraction as well as a workplace. Its showmanship is visible even outside the theatre: the large cabin in the Japanese quarter is hung with clusters of streamers, while its walls display a brightly colored, deliberately perspective-less picture of jugglers.

The narrative introduces Batulcar through this theatrical setting and describes him as a sort of Barnum. His enterprise depends on a public spectacle, but its advertised departure also gives Passepartout a concrete prospect: if he can join the performers, he can travel toward San Francisco. Batulcar is therefore not simply the owner of a stage on which the action happens; his troupe offers a practical, if undignified, temporary solution to Passepartout’s predicament.

Hiring Passepartout

Passepartout follows a clown back to the Japanese quarter and asks Batulcar for a servant’s position. Batulcar initially takes the disguised Frenchman for a native, then recognizes that the appearance is a costume and asks who he really is. When Passepartout identifies himself as French, Batulcar tests what he can do rather than offering him the job he first requested.

The audition is as eccentric as the troupe’s act: Batulcar asks whether Passepartout can sing while standing on his head, with a spinning top balanced on his left foot and a sabre on his right. Passepartout thinks he can manage it, recalling exercises from his younger days. Batulcar accepts that answer, and the engagement is concluded on the spot. The exchange makes the terms of Passepartout’s entry plain: he has not secured a servant’s place, but a performing role based on a skill he believes he can recover.

The work is described as lacking dignity, yet its immediate value is practical. Passepartout has found something to do, and the troupe is due to leave for San Francisco within a week. Batulcar’s company thus offers a means of crossing the Pacific at precisely the moment Passepartout wants to get to the United States. His employment is brief, but it creates the circumstance that brings him back into contact with Phileas Fogg and Aouda.

The broken pyramid and departure

Batulcar appears again at the theatre after the troupe’s pyramid has been broken. Furious, he demands damages for the breakage. Phileas Fogg appeases him by giving him a handful of banknotes. The scene moves Batulcar from employer to aggrieved claimant: the performance has been disrupted, and the cost is settled by Fogg rather than by Passepartout.

The payment clears the way for the party to leave. At half-past six, the steamer’s hour of departure, Phileas Fogg and Aouda go aboard, followed by Passepartout. In his haste, Passepartout still has his wings and six-foot-long nose on. Batulcar does not accompany them in the account; his last function in this episode is to demand compensation, receive Fogg’s payment, and leave the travelers free to catch the vessel.

Narrative role

Batulcar’s appearances connect spectacle with practical necessity. His troupe is at once a public entertainment, a source of temporary employment, and a means of travel. The same theatrical world that admits Passepartout because of a comic physical feat also sends him onward in costume, with the wings and exaggerated nose still attached when he boards the steamer.

Batulcar’s dealings with Passepartout and Fogg are brief and transactional. He rejects the request for a servant, accepts a performer instead, and later demands money when the pyramid is damaged. Those actions give the episode a clear sequence of terms and consequences: audition, employment, disruption, compensation, departure. His role is limited, but it helps turn Passepartout’s time in the Japanese quarter into a passage back toward the journey.