Napoleon, to use familiar English, "did not see it." When he liked women he liked them pretty and feminine; he had not the faintest idea of admitting any kind of partner in his glory; he had no literary taste; and not only did Madame de Stael herself meddle with politics, but her friend, Constant, under the Consulate, chose to give himself airs of opposition in the English sense.

Moreover, she still wrote, and Bonaparte disliked and dreaded everyone who wrote with any freedom.

Her book, _De la Litterature_, in 1800, was taken as a covert attack on the Napoleonic _regime_; her father shortly after republished another on finance and politics, which was disliked; and the success of _Delphine_, in 1803, put the finishing touch to the petty hatred of any kind of rival superiority which distinguished the Corsican more than any other man of equal genius.

Madame de Stael was ordered not to approach within forty leagues of Paris, and this exile, with little softening and some excesses of rigour, lasted till the return of the Bourbons.
Then it was that the German and Italian journeys already mentioned (the death of M.Necker happening between them and recalling his daughter from the first) led to the writing of _Corinne_.
A very few words before we turn to the consideration of the book, as a book and by itself, may appropriately finish all that need be said here about the author's life.

After the publication of _Corinne_ she returned to Germany, and completed the observation which she thought necessary for the companion book _De l'Allemagne_.