ef," 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 th