Around the World in Eighty Days Chapter 4 Summary

In which Phileas Fogg astounds Passepartout, his servant

  • Phileas finishes his whist game, winning twenty guineas in the process, and then he heads back home.
  • Passepartout is pretty amazed that his obsessively on time master shows up at home several hours early. He's even more shocked when Phileas tells him they're leaving for Dover and Calais in ten minutes.
  • Say what? Passepartout can't believe he's going around the world with Fogg. He'd so been looking forward to a quiet, uneventful life with this guy. He thinks to himself perhaps this is all a joke, and maybe they'll only go a little ways before Fogg decides he's had enough fun and comes home.
  • Passepartout packs all their traveling stuff into a carpetbag and then Phileas proceeds to dump a roll of banknotes in—twenty thousand pounds worth. He tells Passepartout to "take good care" of it. No pressure.
  • They lock the door and start off. Upon reaching the train station, a beggar woman asks them for alms. Mr. Fogg gives her twenty guineas and Passepartout (and we) are extremely touched by his generosity.
  • The friends from the Reform Club are at the train station to see them off. Fogg tells them he'll get a stamp in his passport for each of the countries he has been in when going around the world so they can be assured he's really been doing what he said instead of taking an extended vacation.
  • As they start to snooze comfortably on the train, Passepartout realizes suddenly that he left the gas on in his room. Fogg calmly tells him "it will burn at your expense."