At twenty, she left Belgium for Paris, where she met the Belgian scientist Bernard Heuvelmans, famous for his work in cryptozoology.
Critics praised it as a striking literary debut;[4][5] Albert-Marie Schmidt wrote that Watteau had created "a new kind of fantasy" (un nouveau fantastique).
[2] Her following novels, La nuit aux yeux de bête (1956), L'ange à fourrure (1958), and Je suis le ténébreux (1962), cemented her reputation as one of the foremost Francophone fantasy writers of the twentieth century.
[8] In the 1970s, Watteau published two new books, Nous sommes deux dans l'Arche et Quand les singes hurleurs se tairont.
[1] In 1972, Lindbergh and Watteau established a grant-funded primate research center on an 82-acre estate in the Dordogne valley in France, where they raised and studied dozens of South American monkeys.
[2] During Watteau's marriage to Lindbergh, the couple arranged for Heuvelmans, then in poverty, to live in a small house on the grounds of the Dordogne estate.