The exact date of the beginning of what Mme. de Stael's ad mirers call her duel with Napoleon is not easy to determine. Judging from the title of her book Dix annees d'exil, it should be put at 1804 judging from the time at which it became pretty clear that the first man in France and she who wished to be the first woman in France were not likely to get on together, it might be put several years earlier. In 1802 she published the first of her really noteworthy books, the novel Delphine. In 1803 she returned to Paris. She was directed, by order of Napoleon, not to reside within forty leagues of Paris, and after considerable delay she set out, in company with Constant, by Metz and Frank fort to Weimar, and arrived there in December. There she stayed during the winter and then went to Berlin, where she made the acquaintance of August Wilhelm Schlegel, who afterwards became one of her intimates at Coppet. Thence she travelled to Vienna, where the news of her father's death (April 8) reached her.
She returned to Coppet, and found herself its wealthy and independent mistress, but her sorrow for her father was deep and certainly sincere. She spent the summer at the chateau with a brilliant company; in the autumn she journeyed to Italy accom panied by Schlegel and Sismondi, and there gathered the mate rials of her most famous work, Corinne. She returned in the summer of 1805, and spent nearly a year in writing Corinne; in 1806 she broke the decree of exile and lived for a time undis turbed near Paris. In 1807 Corinne, the first aesthetic romance not written in German, appeared. It is in fact, what it was described as being at the time of its appearance, "a picturesque tour couched in the form of a novel." The publication was taken as a reminder of her existence, and the police of the empire sent her back to Coppet. She stayed there as usual for the summer, and then set out once more for Germany. She was again at Coppet in the summer of 1808 (in which year Constant broke with her, subsequently marrying a German lady) and set to work at her book, De l'Allemagne, which occupied her for the next two years. She decided to publish the book in Paris. The submission to censorship which this entailed was sufficiently inconsistent and she wrote to the emperor one of the unfortunate letters, at once undignified and provoking, of which she had the secret. The reply to her letter was the condemnation of the whole edition of her book (ten thousand copies) as "not French," and her own exile from France. She retired again to Coppet, where she was not at first interfered with, and she found consolation in a young officer of Swiss origin named Rocca, twenty-three years her junior, whom she married privately in 1811.
The operations of the imperial police in regard to Mme. de Stael are rather obscure. She was at first left undisturbed, but by degrees the chateau itself became taboo, and her visitors found themselves punished heavily. Mathieu de Montmorency and Mme. Recamier were exiled for the crime of seeing her. On May 23,
she left Coppet almost secretly, and journeyed by Bern, Innsbruck and Salzburg to Vienna. There she obtained an Austrian passport to the frontier, and, after some trouble, receiving a Russian pass port in Galicia, she escaped from Napoleonic Europe.
She journeyed slowly through Russia and Finland to Sweden, making some stay at St. Petersburg, spent the winter in Stock holm, and then set out for England. Here she received a brilliant reception and was much lionized during the season of 1813. She published De l'Allemagne in the autumn, was saddened by the death of her second son Albert, who had entered the Swedish army and fell in a duel brought on by gambling, undertook her Considerations sur la revolution francaise, and when Louis XVIII. had been restored, returned to Paris. She was in Paris when the news of Napoleon's landing arrived and at once fled to Coppet, but a singular story, much discussed, is current of her having approved Napoleon's return. There is no direct evidence of it, but the conduct of her close ally Constant may be quoted in its support, and it is certain that she had no affection for the Bour bons. In October, after Waterloo, she set out for Italy, not only for the advantage of her own health but for that of her second husband, Rocca, who was dying of consumption. Her daughter married Duke Victor de Broglie on Feb. 20, 1816, at Pisa. The whole family returned to Coppet in June, and Byron now frequently visited Mme. de Stael there. Despite her increasing ill-health she returned to Paris for the winter of and her salon was much frequented. She died on July 14, 1817.
Baron Auguste de Stael (d. 1827) edited the complete works of his mother in seventeen volumes (Paris, 1820-21), with a notice by Mme. Necker de Saussure, and the edition was afterwards republished in a compacter form, and, supplemented by some Oeuvres inedites, is still obtainable in three volumes, large 8vo (Didot). The Consider ations and the Dix annees d'exil had been published after Mme. de Stael's death. Some Lettres inedites to H. Meister were published in 1903. There is no recent reissue of the whole, and the minor works have not been reprinted, but Corinne, Delphine and De l'Allemagne are easily accessible in cheap and separate forms. Of separate works on Mme. de Stael, or rather on Coppet and its society, besides those of MM. Caro and Othenin d'Haussonville, may be mentioned the capital work of A. Sorel in the Grands ecrivains francais. In English, there are biographies by A. Stevens (London, 188o), and Lady Blen nerhasset (1889).
See also E. Herriot, Un ouvrage inedit de Mme. de Steel (1904) ; P. Kohler, Mme. de Stail et la Suisse; Etude biographique et lit teraire (Lausanne, 1918) ; I. Boy-Ed, Germaine von Stael (Stuttgart, 1921) ; H. Glaesener, La Revelatrice d'un peuple. Mme. de Stail (1921) ; D. G. Larg, Mme. de Stael. La Vie dans l'Oeuvre, 1766-180o (1924) 0. B. P. G. de Cleron, Mme. de Stael et M. Necker, d'apres leer correspondance inedite (1925).