It was the triumph of a man whose whole life was wrapped up in the past life of Egypt, whose own life was as romantic as that of any man who was destined to throw a little light upon the dead civilizations of the Pharaohs. Maspero was but a boy of fourteen when he was attracted by some of the ancient picture-writing of the Egyptians. The queer little figures exercised a strange spell over him. He was quite fascinated by them, so much so, that he made up his boyish mind to learn to read them. Probably hundreds of thousands of boys have seen pictures of the hieroglyphics and thought them very funny, but who has heard of another boy who was so anxious to read them that he studied them at any and every opportunity, as Gaston Maspero did? He who seeks knowledge will always find some way of acquiring it. Gaston Maspero studied the picture-writing to such good purpose that he learned to read it quite easily and translate it with considerable skill. He used to read the pictures to his school friends, and they were considerably impressed by this ability. One night in 1867, some of Maspero’s fellow-students were having dinner with their tutor, and Mariette, the famous Egyptologist, was present. Naturally the talk turned on Egypt, and the students tried to impress Mariette by mentioning that Maspero could read hieroglyphics, and that he had taught himself. Mariette was amused at the idea. “Ask him to read this for me,” he said, and gave them an inscription he had just discovered and which had not been translated. Maspero’s companions took the inscription, and Maspero sat down and translated it. When Mariette received the translation he was far more amazed at finding this young man of twenty-one in Paris who could read hieroglyphics, than he would have been at finding some new temple on the Nile. It seemed to him simply incredible, so he gave Maspero something else to translate—lines that were all mutilated and from which a great deal was missing. Maspero sat down to the problem, and after a few days managed to translate the fragments and supply the missing parts. Then Mariette realized that he had indeed found a born Egyptologist, and it is not surprising that the boy who was so interested that he taught himself to read the picture-writing should succeed Mariette in Egypt. Who knows what Mariette thought when the translations of Maspero were brought to him? Perhaps his mind flashed back over the years to the rather unhappy time when he, a lad of eighteen, was professor of French at a school in Stratford-on-Avon, to the days when his talent for drawing was confined to designing ribbons for a Coventry manufacturer. Maybe he remembered how happily he returned to France to take his degree at Douai, those articles he wrote to add to his income, the cousin who had been dealing with Champollion’s material, and whose death brought all the material of that great man under Mariette’s own fingers.