quasicontractual obligation; an obligation, indeed, which
is so far from being contractual, that, logically, it may be said to
arise from the extinction rather than from the formation of a contract;
for when a man pays over money, intending thereby to discharge a debt,
his purpose is clearly to loose a bond by which he is already bound, not
to bind himself by a fresh one. Still, the person to whom money is thus
paid is laid under an obligation exactly as if he had taken a loan for
consumption, and therefore he is liable to a condiction.

7 Under certain circumstances money which is not owed, and which is paid
by mistake, is not recoverable; the rule of the older lawyers on this
point being that wherever a defendant's denial of his obligation is
punished by duplication of the damages to be recovered--as in actions
under the lex Aquilia, and for the recovery of a legacy--he cannot get
the money back on this plea. The older lawyers, however, applied this
rule only to such legacies of specific sums of money as were given by
condemnation; but by our constitution, by which we have assimilated
legacies and trust bequests, we have made this duplication of damages
on denial an incident of all actions for their recovery, provided the
legatee or beneficiary is a church, or other holy place honoured for its
devotion to religion and piety. Such legacies, although paid when not
due, cannot be reclaimed.

TITLE XXVIII. OF PERSONS THROUGH WHOM WE CAN ACQUIRE OBLIGATIONS

Having thus gone through the classes of contractual and quasicontractual
obligations, we must remark that rights can be acquired by you not only
on your own contracts, but also on those of persons in your power--that
is to say, your slaves and children. What is acquired by the contracts
of your slaves becomes wholly yours; but the acquisitions of children in
your power by obligations must be divided on the principle of ownership
and usufruct laid down in our constitution: that is to say, of the
material results of an action brought on an obligation made in favour
of a son the father shall have the usufruct, though the ownership is
reserved to the son himself: provided, of course, that the action is
brought by the father, in accordance with the distinction drawn in our
recent constitution.

1 Freemen also, and the slaves of another person, acquire for you if
you possess them in good faith, but only in two cases, namely, when they
acquire by their own labour, or