PARIS — “Come on baby, light my fire,” urged the ghost of the Lizard King.

We were just five days shy of the Opening Ceremony of the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, and the sacred flame of Sport, obeying the long-dead rocker James Douglas Morrison, was making its way toward the Château de Vincennes on the eastern flank of Paris, just a headstone’s throw from the celebrity graveyard named for the royal confessor Père Lachaise.