Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/175



N the year 1872, the house No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens—the house in which Sheridan died, in 1814—was inhabited by Phileas Fogg, Esq., one of the most singular and most noticed members of the Reform Club of London, although he seemed to take care to do nothing which might attract attention.

This Phileas Fogg, then, an enigmatic personage, of whom nothing was known but that he was a very polite man, and one of the most perfect gentlemen of good English society, succeeded one of the greatest orators that honor England.

An Englishman Phileas Fogg was surely, but perhaps not a Londoner. He was never seen on 'Change, at the bank, or in any of the counting-rooms of the "City." The docks of London had never received a vessel fitted out by Phileas Fogg. This gentleman did not figure in any public body. His name had never sounded in any Inns of Court. He never pleaded in the Court of Chancery, nor the Queen's Bench. He was neither a manufacturer, nor a merchant, nor a gentleman farmer. He was not a member of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, or the London Institution, or the Literary Institution of the West, or the Law Institute, or that Institute of the Arts and Sciences, placed under the direct patronage of her gracious majesty. In fact, he belonged to none of the numerous societies that swarm in the capital of England, from the Harmonic to the Entomological Society, founded principally for the purpose of destroying hurtful insects. Phileas Fogg was a member of the Reform Club, and that was all.

Should anyone be astonished that such a mysterious gentleman should be among the members of this honorable institution, we will reply that he obtained admission on the recommendation of Baring Brothers, with whom he had