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.
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