Heiress and daughter of Louis XVI's Minister and Director General of Finance, Jacques Necker, Madame de Stal became influential through her writings and her brilliant Salon in Paris. She became increasingly disillusioned with Napoleon and, perceiving her as a dangerous intriguer, he banished her from within forty leagues of Paris in 1803. Her exile inspired her most influential works and she travelled widely particularly to Switzerland and Germany. In 1810 'De L'Allemagne' was partially printed before being seized and destroyed (it was later published in London by John Murray in 1813). She found herself surrounded by spies, escaped secretly to Switzerland and from there to St Petersburg and London in 1813. She was welcomed to Paris by Louis XVIII a year later.