Ramuz met Cécile Cellier (1872–1956) in Paris in 1905. Born into a good family from Neuchâtel, the young woman, a few years his senior, was a painter. Trained in the French capital, she counted artist Alice Bailly among her friends and belonged to the small circle of Swiss expatriates who frequented the same cafés and studios. If Ramuz’s Journal is any guide, their romantic involvement began in 1909.
In any case, in early 1913, there was no getting round the fact that Cécile Cellier was pregnant. Ramuz married her in a secret ceremony in Paris on February 18, then announced the union to his astonished family and friends. After the initial shock, he gradually came to terms with being both a husband and father. At first, he had Cécile live with him in his apartment on the rue Boissonade, in the Montparnasse district. However, she soon returned to her mother in Geneva, which is where their daughter Marianne was born. The new family hesitated between life in Paris and going back to Switzerland. The relative difficulties of a career in Paris and the advantages of a stable home on the shores of Lake Geneva were factors in Ramuz’s decision to return to Switzerland in the spring of 1914.
« My stupefaction, when I think about it, to see myself married, a father and grandfather, with a household, a mortgaged house (but a house nonetheless), and to see that my lot in life has been so different from the one I imagined. And even that I wished for. »
Journal, October 15, 1942