Gaston Leroux

“ And this explained how Gabriel was able, for several days and nights, to scour the roofs of the capital and frighten the town with his sinister exploits before his absence from the Jardin des Plantes was discovered.
But then where was the famous pithecanthrope, the monster, half man and half brute, who spoke the language of men? What had become of Coriolis' invention? The police were much too glad to be rid of one monster to saddle themselves with another. ”

“ No, from this point of view, we need be astonished at nothing, in monkeys.
Gabriel's cage, like many others at the Jardin des Plantes, was a double cage, with a railed open-air compartment and another railed compartment inside the lion-house. The communicating-door was usually left open, so that Gabriel could seek sun or shade according to the temperature and the time of day. As the keeper or the visitor can see only one compartment at a time, each must have thought that Gabriel was in the second when he was looking into the first and vice versa. ”

“ The books written by travellers in the equatorial forests furnish us with examples of this kind of rape in which the "wild men of the woods" take a futile and childish pleasure and which can only be compared with the passion of the thieving magpie for collecting objects which it accumulates in hiding-places known to itself alone. ”