Phileas Fogg had left his house in Saville Row at half-past eleven, and after having put his right foot before his left foot five hundred and seventy-five times, and his left foot before his right foot five hundred and seventy-six times, he arrived at the Reform Club, a spacious and lofty building in Pall Mall, which cost not less than three millions to build.

Phileas Fogg repaired immediately to the dining-room, whose nine windows opened upon a fine garden with trees already gilded by autumn. There, he took his seat at his regular table where his plate was awaiting him. His breakfast consisted of a side dish, a boiled fish with Reading sauce of first quality, a scarlet slice of roast beef garnished with mushrooms, a rhubarb and gooseberry tart, and a bit of Chester cheese, the whole washed down with a few cups of that excellent tea, specially gathered for the stores of the Reform Club.

At forty-seven minutes past noon, this gentleman rose and turned his steps towards the large hall, a sumptuous apartment adorned with paintings in elegant frames. There a servant handed him the Times uncut, the tiresome cutting of which he managed with a steadiness of hand which denoted great practice in this difficult operation. The reading of this journal occupied Phileas Fogg until a quarter before four, and that of the Standard, which succeeded it, lasted until dinner. This repast passed off in the same way as the breakfast, with the addition of "Royal British Sauce."

At twenty minutes before six the gentleman reappeared in the large hall, and was absorbed in the reading of the Morning Chronicle.

Half an hour later various members of the Reform Club entered and came near the fire-place, in which a coal fire was burning. They were the usual partners of Phileas Fogg, like himself passionate players of whist; the engineer Andrew Stuart, the bankers John Sullivan and Samuel Fallentin, the brewer Thomas Flanagan, Gauthier Ralph, one of the directors of the Bank of England—rich and respected personages, even in this club counting among its members the elite of trade and finance.

"Well, Ralph," asked Thomas Flanagan, "how about that robbery?"

"Why," replied Andrew Stuart, "the bank will lose the money."

"I hope, on the contrary," said Gauthier Ralph, "that we shall put our hands on the robber. Detectives, very skillful fellows, have been sent to America and the Continent, to all the principal ports of embarkation and debarkation, and it will be difficult for this fellow to escape."

"But you have the description of the robber?" asked Andrew Stuart.

"In the first place, he is not a robber," replied Gauthier Ralph, seriously.

"How, he is not a robber, this fellow who has abstracted fifty-five thousand pounds in bank-notes?"

"No," replied Gauthier Ralph.

"Is he then a manufacturer?" said John Sullivan.

"The Morning Chronicle assures us that he is a gentleman."

The party that made this reply was no other than Phileas Fogg, whose head then emerged from the mass of papers heaped around him. At the same time, he greeted his colleagues, who returned his salutation. The matter under discussion, which the various journals of the United Kingdom were discussing ardently, had occurred three days before, on the 29th of September. A package of bank-notes, making the enormous sum of fifty-five thousand pounds, had been taken from the counter of the principal cashier of the Bank of England. The Under-Governor, Gauthier Ralph, only replied to anyone who was astonished that such a robbery could have been so easily accomplished, that at this very moment the cashier was occupied with registering a receipt of three shillings six pence, and that he could not have his eyes everywhere.

But it is proper to be remarked here—which makes the robbery less mysterious—that this admirable establishment, the Bank of England, seems to care very much for the dignity of the public. There are neither guards nor gratings; gold, silver, and bank-notes being freely exposed, and, so to speak, at the mercy of the first comer. They would not suspect the honor of anyone passing by. One of the best observers of English customs relates the following: He had the curiosity to examine closely, in one of the rooms of the bank, where he was one day, an ingot of gold weighing seven to eight pounds, which was lying exposed on the cashier's table; he picked up this ingot, examined it, passed it to his neighbor, and he to another, so that the ingot, passing from hand to hand, went as far as the end of a dark entry, and did not return to its place for half an hour, and the cashier had not once raised his head.