3/5/2009
25
Lieutenant Paul Bolang
This,
instead of separating his new friends from him, seemed to attract
them even more. He achieved a popularity and leadership
he accepted but did not desire.
Paris
provided him much more than this experience of his own French
heritage. Although Paul spent some years in the lands of
antiquity, he had no exposure to the treasures of those places.
In the Louvre, for the first time, he came face to face, with
the ancients. The beautiful articles from the past intrigued and
beguiled him. He spent hours studying them. The mummies and
artifacts of Egypt, especially, cast a spell over him. Though technically
too young for the classes, he attended every lecture presented
on this particular subject. There he learned of the work
of Jean Francois Champollion, who first deciphered the Egyptian
hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone, and then he knew
the future life had prepared him to seize.