Ursula
Author: first_name: Honoré de
last_name: Balzac
Language: English
Year: 1891

“Ursula,” first published in French in 1841 as “Ursule Mirouët,” is part of Balzac’s great suite of novels, collectively titled “The Human Comedy.” 

A wealthy, elderly doctor has raised as his goddaughter a child who is the daughter of his deceased brother-in-law — a man who was himself illegitimate by birth. The doctor retires to a provincial town that is filled with his relatives by birth and inter-marriage. By French inheritance laws of the time, these relatives have a right to expect at l