Delphine is represented as of so pure and self-sacrificing a nature that she not only peremptorily rejects the idea of a union with Léonce, which would necessarily destroy his wife's happiness, but will not permit him to dwell upon the thought. She calms him; she points him to a profounder morality and religion than that in which he, as a child of the eighteenth century, has been brought up: "Léonce, I did not expect to find such an indifference to religious ideas in you. I take it upon me to reproach you for it. Your morality is only based upon honour; you would have been much happier if you had given your homage to those simple and true principles which teach us to submit our actions to the dictates of our conscience, and free us from all other yokes. You know that my education, far from enslaving my mind, has made it if anything too independent. It is possible that superstition is as yet more suitable for a woman than freedom of thought; weak and wavering beings that we are, we need support on every side, and love is a kind of credulity which is perhaps apt to ally itself with all the other kinds of credulity and superstition. But the noble guardian of my youth esteemed my character sufficiently to wish to develop my reason, and never did he require of me to accept any opinion without examining into it. I can therefore speak to you of the religion I love, as I can speak on any other subject which my heart and mind have freely tested, and you cannot attribute what I say to you to inculcated habit or the unweighed impressions of childhood.... Do not, Léonce, refuse the comfort which is offered to us by natural religion." We distinguish an echo of Rousseau, and the influence of the reaction against Voltaire, in this sermon which Necker's daughter places in the mouth of her second self. The plot develops; soon it becomes impossible any longer to maintain the unnatural union, to endure the unnatural misery. Henri de Lebensei writes the letter advising a divorce, which brought ill-fortune to the book, and which fell like a firebrand into the clerical camp. He writes to Délphine: "The man you love is worthy of you, madame, but neither his nor your feeling is of any avail to alter the situation in which an unhappy destiny has placed you. One thing alone can restore your reputation and procure your happiness. Collect all your strength to hear me. Léonce is not irrevocably bound to Mathilde; he can still become your husband; in a month from now divorce will be legalised by the Legislative Assembly." We must remember that the book appeared just at the time of the reinstitution of Catholic marriage in France.