After spending his childhood at Yonne and his formative tertiary education years at Joigny, he left for Tunisia in 1929 to receive a professorship.
After ten years, he received a nomination to be Regional Director of the Arts and Tradition at Sfax.
There, he founded the Dar Jellouli Museum and during the sombre years of the Second World War, received a philosophy degree.
The next big development in his career came in Algeria when he took a position, from 1946 to 1957, as Director of Artisan Services to the General Government.
He met Georges Marçais who inspired him to follow a different route with him; to do archaeological research as a team at Kalâa of Béni Hammad on the site of the palace of the Ziri at Achir.