From the example of the Cours de Code Napoléon of Charles Demolombe (1804-1887), the present study intends to examine the continuity or the discontinuity of the legal thought in France between the 18th and the 19th century. The use of a literary analysis of the legal speech (intertextuality and Metatextuality) allows to show that, in spite of the number and the importance of the formers references, the legal thought knows a break in the first half of the 19th century.