“My dear children,” said he, “your uncle having been born in 1746, is eighty-three years old at the present time; now, old men are given to folly, and that little—­”

“Viper!” cried Madame Massin.

“Hussy!” said Zelie.

“Let us call her by her own name,” said Dionis.

“Well, she’s a thief,” said Madame Cremiere.

“A pretty thief,” remarked Desire.

“That little Ursula,” went on Dionis, “has managed to get hold of his heart.  I have been thinking of your interests, and I did not wait until now before making certain inquiries; now this is what I have discovered about that young—­”

“Marauder,” said the collector.

“Inveigler,” said the clerk of the court.

“Hold your tongue, friends,” said the notary, “or I’ll take my hat and be off.”

“Come, come, papa,” cried Minoret, pouring out a little glass of rum and offering it to the notary; “here, drink this, it comes from Rome itself; and now go on.”

“Ursula is, it is true, the legitimate daughter of Joseph Mirouet; but her father was the natural son of Valentin Mirouet, your uncle’s father-in-law.  Being therefore an illegitimate niece, any will the doctor might make in her favor could probably be contested; and if he leaves her his fortune in that way you could bring a suit against Ursula.  This, however, might turn out ill for you, in case the court took the view that there was no relationship between Ursula and the doctor.  Still, the suit would frighten an unprotected girl, and bring about a compromise—­”

“The law is so rigid as to the rights of natural children,” said the newly fledged licentiate, eager to parade his knowledge, “that by the judgment of the court of appeals dated July 7, 1817, a natural child can claim nothing from his natural grandfather, not even a maintenance.  So you see the illegitimate parentage is made retrospective.  The law pursues the natural child even to its legitimate descent, on the ground that benefactions done to grandchildren reach the natural son through that medium.  This is shown by articles 757, 908, and 911 of the civil Code.  The royal court of Paris, by a decision of the 26th of January of last year, cut off a legacy made to the legitimate child of a natural son by his grandfather, who, as grandfather, was as distant to a natural grandson as the doctor, being an uncle, is to Ursula.”

“All that,” said Goupil, “seems to me to relate only to the bequests made by grandfathers to natural descendants.  Ursula is not a blood relation of Doctor Minoret.  I remember a decision of the royal court at Colmar, rendered in 1825, just before I took my degree, which declared that after the decease of a natural child his descendants could no longer be prohibited from inheriting.  Now, Ursula’s father is dead.”

Goupil’s argument produced what journalists who report the sittings of legislative assemblies are wont to call “profound sensation.”