Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/358

 Thus, during this day, Sunday, the house in Saville Row was as if uninhabited, and for the first time since he lived there, Phileas Fogg did not go to his club, when the Parliament House clock struck half past eleven.

And why should this gentleman have presented himself at the Reform Club? His colleagues no longer expected him. Since Phileas Fogg did not appear in the saloon of the Reform Club the evening of the day before, on this fatal date, Saturday, December 21, at quarter before nine, his bet was lost. It was not even necessary that he should go to his banker's to draw this sum of twenty thousand pounds. His opponents had in their hands a check signed by him, and it only needed a simple writing to go to Baring Brothers in order that the twenty thousand pounds might be carried to their credit.

Mr. Fogg had then nothing to take him out, and he did not go out. He remained in his room, putting his affairs in order. Passepartout was continually going up and down stairs. The hours did not move for this poor fellow. He listened at the door of his master's room, and in doing so, did not think he committed the least indiscretion. He looked through the keyhole, and imagined that he had this right. Passepartout feared at every moment some catastrophe. Sometimes he thought of Fix, but a change had taken place in his mind. He no longer blamed the detective. Fix had been deceived, like everybody else, with respect to Philas Fogg, and in following him and arresting him he had only done his duty, while he. This thought overwhelmed him, and he considered himself the most wretched of human beings.

When, finally, Passepartout would be too unhappy to be alone, he would knock at Aouda's door, enter her room, and sit down in a corner without saying a word, and look at the young woman with a pensive air.

About half-post seven in the evening, Phileas Fogg sent to ask Aouda if she could receive him and in a few moments after the young woman and he were alone in the room.

Phileas Fogg took a chair and sat down near the fireplace opposite Aouda. His face reflected no emotion. Fogg returned was exactly the Fogg who had gone away. The same calmness, the same impassibility.