Duponte, "stand where I am now and likely your cake shall return in two to seven minutes. Approximately speaking." Duponte's voice exhibited neither joy nor particular interest in the matter.
"Indeed?" the man cried.
"Yes. I should think so," said Duponte, and he began walking away again.
"But-how?" the man now thought to ask.
I, too, was held dumbstruck by Duponte's proposition, and Duponte saw this.
"Imbeciles!" said Duponte to himself.
"What?" the man asked with offense.
"Pardon, Monsieur Duponte!" I said, also protesting the insult.
Duponte ignored this. "I shall demonstrate the conclusion," he said. We two waited at the very edge of anticipation. But Duponte simply stood there. After a space of three and a half minutes, roughly, a regular stampede of hurried noises was heard nearby and there-I must reveal-came a piece of cake from around the corner, floating in the air, right near the nose of its rightful owner!
"The cake!" I pointed.
The confection was attached to a short string of some sort, and followed behind two small boys running headlong through the gardens. The man chased down the boy and untied his cake from its thief. He then ran back to us.
"Why, remarkable monsieur, you were entirely right! But how have you recovered my cake?" For a moment the man looked at Duponte suspiciously, as though he had been involved in some scheme. Duponte, seeing he would have no peace without explaining, offered this simple description of what had transpired.
Among the most popular attractions in the natural collections of the Jardin des Plantes was the exhibition of bears. Before being accosted by the cake-widower, Duponte had casually noticed that it was near the time in which the bears usually stirred from their sleep. This was also known by the many local devotees to these animals, and it was a daily occupation to try to make the waking bears perform various antics and climb the pole provided for them, an effort that often involved dangling some item of food into their pit by twine or string. Indeed, the vendors at the gates to the gardens sold as much of their wares for these purposes as for human nourishment. But since among the lovers of the bears who would come from miles away for this sport were many young boys, and since most of these gamins had no spare sous in their pockets for such delicacies, Duponte reasoned that as the man had turned to secure his umbrella at the sign of rain, one of these boys had snatched the cake on his way to the bears. Because the bench was quite high, and the boy short, the man, on turning around again, saw no one nearby and thought the source of the theft fantastic.
"Very well. But how did you know the cake would return, and at this very spot?" the man asked.
"You may have noticed," continued Duponte, seeming to talk more to himself than to either of us, "that upon entering the grounds of the gardens, there was a larger group of officers of the garden in the vicinity of the zoological attractions than usual. Perhaps you remember reading of one of the bears, 'Martin,' having recently devoured a soldier who leaned over too far and fell into their domain."
"Indeed! I remember," said the man.
"No doubt these guards were stationed to prevent young men and boys from any longer climbing the parapets to get close to the monsters."
"Yes! You are likely right, monsieur!" The man stood open-mouthed.
"It might have been further essayed, then, that if a boy had in fact taken possession of your cake, the same lad would be turned away from his plan by these vigilant guardians within the first few minutes of the bears' stirring, and the bandit would return by the most direct path-a path which crosses the grounds where we now stand-to the attraction second in popularity only to the wells of the bears for this sort of spectator: I mean the wire house of the monkeys, who, at the delivery of a bright piece of cloth or item of food, could be made to chase one another in, presumably, a manner almost as enchanting as the bears' climbing of the pole. None of the other popular holdings, the wolves or the parrots, will make such an exhibition over one's cake."
As delighted by this explanation as if it had been his own, the grateful man, with a magnanimous air, invited us to share in his cake, even though it had been in the grubby hands of the boy and had