The Ring of Thoth

Mr. John Vansittart Smith, F.R.S., of 147-A Gower Street, was a
man whose energy of purpose and clearness of thought might have
placed him in the very first rank of scientific observers. He was
the victim, however, of a universal ambition which prompted him to
aim at distinction in many subjects rather than preeminence in one.

In his early days he had shown an aptitude for zoology and for
botany which caused his friends to look upon him as a second
Darwin, but when a professorship was almost within his reach he had
suddenly discontinued his studies and turned his whole attention to
chemistry. Here his researches upon the spectra of the metals had
won him his fellowship in the Royal Society; but again he played
the coquette with his subject, and after a year's absence from the
laboratory he joined the Oriental Society, and delivered a paper on
the Hieroglyphic and Demotic inscriptions of El Kab, thus giving a
crowning example both of the versatility and of the inconstancy of
his talents.

The most fickle of wooers, however, is apt to be caught at last,
and so it was with John Vansittart Smith. The more he burrowed his
way into Egyptology the more impressed he became by the vast field
which it opened to the inquirer, and by the extreme importance
of a subject which promised to throw a light upon the first germs
of human civilisation and the origin of the greater part of our
arts and sciences. So struck was Mr. Smith that he straightway
married an Egyptological young lady who had written upon the sixth
dynasty, and having thus secured a sound base of operations he set
himself to collect materials for a work which should unite the
research of Lepsius and the ingenuity of Champollion. The
preparation of this magnum opus entailed many hurried visits to
the magnificent Egyptian collections of the Louvre, upon the last
of which, no longer ago than the middle of last October, he became
involved in a most strange and noteworthy adventure.

The trains had been slow and the Channel had been rough, so that
the student arrived in Paris in a somewhat befogged and feverish
condition. On reaching the Hotel de France, in the Rue Laffitte,
he had thrown himself upon a sofa for a couple of hours, but
finding that he was unable to sleep, he determined, in spite of his
fatigue, to make his way to the Louvre, settle the point which he
had come to decide, and take the evening train back to Dieppe.
Having come to this conclusion, he donned his greatcoat, for it was
a raw rainy day, and made his way across the Boulevard des Italiens
and down the Avenue de l'Opera. Once in the Louvre he was on
familiar ground, and he speedily made his way to the collection of
papyri which it was his intention to consult.