Around the World in Eighty Days
He had, at least, one resource,—to call on the French and English
consuls at Yokohama for assistance. But he shrank from telling the
story of his adventures, intimately connected as it was with that of
his master; and, before doing so, he determined to exhaust all other
means of aid. As chance did not favour him in the European quarter, he
penetrated that inhabited by the native Japanese, determined, if
necessary, to push on to Yeddo.
The Japanese quarter of Yokohama is called Benten, after the goddess of
the sea, who is worshipped on the islands round about. There
Passepartout beheld beautiful fir and cedar groves, sacred gates of a
singular architecture, bridges half hid in the midst of bamboos and
reeds, temples shaded by immense cedar-trees, holy retreats where were
sheltered Buddhist priests and sectaries of Confucius, and interminable
streets, where a perfect harvest of rose-tinted and red-cheeked
children, who looked as if they had been cut out of Japanese screens,
and who were playing in the midst of short-legged poodles and yellowish
cats, might have been gathered.
The streets were crowded with people. Priests were passing in
processions, beating their dreary tambourines; police and custom-house
officers with pointed hats encrusted with lac and carrying two sabres
hung to their waists; soldiers, clad in blue cotton with white stripes,
and bearing guns; the Mikado’s guards, enveloped in silken doubles,
hauberks and coats of mail; and numbers of military folk of all
ranks—for the military profession is as much respected in Japan as it
is despised in China—went hither and thither in groups and pairs.
Passepartout saw, too, begging friars, long-robed pilgrims, and simple
civilians, with their warped and jet-black hair, big heads, long busts,
slender legs, short stature, and complexions varying from copper-colour
to a dead white, but never yellow, like the Chinese, from whom the
Japanese widely differ. He did not fail to observe the curious
equipages—carriages and palanquins, barrows supplied with sails, and
litters made of bamboo; nor the women—whom he thought not especially
handsome—who took little steps with their little feet, whereon they
wore canvas shoes, straw sandals, and clogs of worked wood, and who
displayed tight-looking eyes, flat chests, teeth fashionably blackened,
and gowns crossed with silken scarfs, tied in an enormous knot behind
an ornament which the modern Parisian ladies seem to have borrowed from
the dames of Japan.
Passepartout wandered for several hours in the midst of this motley
crowd, looking in at the windows of the rich and curious shops, the
jewellery establishments glittering with quaint Japanese ornaments, the
restaurants decked with streamers and banners, the tea-houses, where
the odorous beverage was being drunk with “saki,” a liquor concocted
from the fermentation of rice, and the comfortable smoking-houses,
where they were puffing, not opium, which is almost unknown in Japan,
but a very fine, stringy tobacco. He went on till he found himself in
the fields, in the midst of vast rice plantations. There he saw
dazzling camellias expanding themselves, with flowers which were giving
forth their last colours and perfumes, not on bushes, but on trees, and
within bamboo enclosures, cherry, plum, and apple trees, which the
Japanese cultivate rather for their blossoms than their fruit, and
which queerly-fashioned, grinning scarecrows protected from the
sparrows, pigeons, ravens, and other voracious birds. On the branches
of the cedars were perched large eagles; amid the foliage of the
weeping willows were herons, solemnly standing on one leg; and on every
hand were crows, ducks, hawks, wild birds, and a multitude of cranes,
which the Japanese consider sacred, and which to their minds symbolise
long life and prosperity.
As he was strolling along, Passepartout espied some violets among the
shrubs.
“Good!” said he; “I’ll have some supper.”
But, on smelling them, he found that they were odourless.
“No chance there,” thought he.
The worthy fellow had certainly taken good care to eat as hearty a
breakfast as possible before leaving the “Carnatic;” but, as he had
been walking about all day, the demands of hunger were becoming
importunate. He observed that the butchers stalls contained neither
mutton, goat, nor pork; and, knowing also that it is a sacrilege to
kill cattle, which are preserved solely for farming, he made up his
mind that meat was far from plentiful in Yokohama—nor was he mistaken;
and, in default of butcher’s meat, he could have wished for a quarter
of wild boar or deer, a partridge, or some quails, some game or fish,
which, with rice, the Japanese eat almost exclusively. But he found it
necessary to keep up a stout heart, and to postpone the meal he craved
till the following morning. Night came, and Passepartout re-entered the
native quarter, where he wandered through the streets, lit by
vari-coloured lanterns, looking on at the dancers, who were executing
skilful steps and boundings, and the astrologers who stood in the open
air with their telescopes. Then he came to the harbour, which was lit
up by the resin torches of the fishermen, who were fishing from their
boats.
The streets at last became quiet, and the patrol, the officers of
which, in their splendid costumes, and surrounded by their suites,
Passepartout thought seemed like ambassadors, succeeded the bustling
crowd. Each time a company passed, Passepartout chuckled, and said to
himself: “Good! another Japanese embassy departing for Europe!”
CHAPTER XXIII.
IN WHICH PASSEPARTOUT’S NOSE BECOMES OUTRAGEOUSLY LONG
The next morning poor, jaded, famished Passepartout said to himself
that he must get something to eat at all hazards, and the sooner he did
so the better. He might, indeed, sell his watch; but he would have
starved first. Now or never he must use the strong, if not melodious
voice which nature had bestowed upon him. He knew several French and
English songs, and resolved to try them upon the Japanese, who must be
lovers of music, since they were for ever pounding on their cymbals,
tam-tams, and tambourines, and could not but appreciate European
talent.
It was, perhaps, rather early in the morning to get up a concert, and
the audience prematurely aroused from their slumbers, might not
possibly pay their entertainer with coin bearing the Mikado’s features.
Passepartout therefore decided to wait several hours; and, as he was
sauntering along, it occurred to him that he would seem rather too well
dressed for a wandering artist. The idea struck him to change his
garments for clothes more in harmony with his project; by which he
might also get a little money to satisfy the immediate cravings of
hunger. The resolution taken, it remained to carry it out.
It was only after a long search that Passepartout discovered a native
dealer in old clothes, to whom he applied for an exchange. The man
liked the European costume, and ere long Passepartout issued from his
shop accoutred in an old Japanese coat, and a sort of one-sided turban,
faded with long use. A few small pieces of silver, moreover, jingled in
his pocket.
“Good!” thought he. “I will imagine I am at the Carnival!”
His first care, after being thus “Japanesed,” was to enter a tea-house
of modest appearance, and, upon half a bird and a little rice, to
breakfast like a man for whom dinner was as yet a problem to be solved.
“Now,” thought he, when he had eaten heartily, “I mustn’t lose my head.
I can’t sell this costume again for one still more Japanese. I must
consider how to leave this country of the Sun, of which I shall not
retain the most delightful of memories, as quickly as possible.”
It occurred to him to visit the steamers which were about to leave for
America. He would offer himself as a cook or servant, in payment of his
passage and meals. Once at San Francisco, he would find some means of
going on. The difficulty was, how to traverse the four thousand seven
hundred miles of the Pacific which lay between Japan and the New World.
Passepartout was not the man to let an idea go begging, and directed
his steps towards the docks. But, as he approached them, his project,
which at first had seemed so simple, began to grow more and more
formidable to his mind. What need would they have of a cook or servant
on an American steamer, and what confidence would they put in him,
dressed as he was? What references could he give?
As he was reflecting in this wise, his eyes fell upon an immense
placard which a sort of clown was carrying through the streets. This
placard, which was in English, read as follows:
ACROBATIC JAPANESE TROUPE,
HONOURABLE WILLIAM BATULCAR, PROPRIETOR,
LAST REPRESENTATIONS,
PRIOR TO THEIR DEPARTURE TO THE UNITED STATES,
OF THE
LONG NOSES! LONG NOSES!
UNDER THE DIRECT PATRONAGE OF THE GOD TINGOU!
GREAT ATTRACTION!
“The United States!” said Passepartout; “that’s just what I want!”
He followed the clown, and soon found himself once more in the Japanese
quarter. A quarter of an hour later he stopped before a large cabin,
adorned with several clusters of streamers, the exterior walls of which
were designed to represent, in violent colours and without perspective,
a company of jugglers.
This was the Honourable William Batulcar’s establishment. That
gentleman was a sort of Barnum, the director of a troupe of
mountebanks, jugglers, clowns, acrobats, equilibrists, and gymnasts,
who, according to the placard, was giving his last performances before
leaving the Empire of the Sun for the States of the Union.
Passepartout entered and asked for Mr. Batulcar, who straightway
appeared in person.
“What do you want?” said he to Passepartout, whom he at first took for
a native.
“Would you like a servant, sir?” asked Passepartout.
“A servant!” cried Mr. Batulcar, caressing the thick grey beard which
hung from his chin. “I already have two who are obedient and faithful,
have never left me, and serve me for their nourishment and here they
are,” added he, holding out his two robust arms, furrowed with veins as
large as the strings of a bass-viol.
“So I can be of no use to you?”
“None.”
“The devil! I should so like to cross the Pacific with you!”
“Ah!” said the Honourable Mr. Batulcar. “You are no more a Japanese
than I am a monkey! Who are you dressed up in that way?”
“A man dresses as he can.”
“That’s true. You are a Frenchman, aren’t you?”
“Yes; a Parisian of Paris.”
“Then you ought to know how to make grimaces?”
“Why,” replied Passepartout, a little vexed that his nationality should
cause this question, “we Frenchmen know how to make grimaces, it is
true but not any better than the Americans do.”
“True. Well, if I can’t take you as a servant, I can as a clown. You
see, my friend, in France they exhibit foreign clowns, and in foreign
parts French clowns.”
“Ah!”
“You are pretty strong, eh?”
“Especially after a good meal.”
“And you can sing?”
“Yes,” returned Passepartout, who had formerly been wont to sing in the
streets.
“But can you sing standing on your head, with a top spinning on your
left foot, and a sabre balanced on your right?”
“Humph! I think so,” replied Passepartout, recalling the exercises of
his younger days.
“Well, that’s enough,” said the Honourable William Batulcar.
The engagement was concluded there and then.
Passepartout had at last found something to do. He was engaged to act
in the celebrated Japanese troupe. It was not a very dignified
position, but within a week he would be on his way to San Francisco.
The performance, so noisily announced by the Honourable Mr. Batulcar,
was to commence at three o’clock, and soon the deafening instruments of
a Japanese orchestra resounded at the door. Passepartout, though he had