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When, however, under no constraint but able to do as he pleases, a man himself, of his own motion and after putting his son to the test, takes him back, what pretext for change of mind remains, or what further recourse to the law? The legislator would say to you: “If he was bad and deserved to be disowned, what made you ask him back? Why did you readmit him to your house? Why did you nullify the law? You were free and at liberty not to do this. Surely it cannot be conceded that you should make sport of the laws and that the courts should be convened to suit your changes of mind, that the laws should be relaxed one moment and enforced the next and the jurors sit to register, or rather to execute, your decisions, inflicting a penalty at one time, bringing you together at another, as often as it shall please you. You begat him once for all, you brought him up once for all, and have once for all, in return for this, the power to disown him, and then only if you are held to be doing it justly. This persistence, this interminability, this prodigious casualness is beyond the legal right of a father.”
