Auguste Mouriès

Aubrey is a debt-ridden man. One day, he has the idea of ​​faking his death and taking on the role of a deceased cousin about to receive a beautiful inheritance. This idea will, however, lead him to very difficult situations.

A simpleton turns out to be the lucky charm of a village.

Soon after Marius's departure, Fanny learns that she is pregnant with his child, to the disappointment of her mother and of Marius's father, César. To secure a better life for her unborn child, she accepts a marriage proposal from the aging widower Honoré Panisse.

In a Provençal village, two jolly good fellows, Boule and Pons, decide to dress as Saint Anthony and Saint Nicholas for the distribution of presents to the children on the feast of Saint Nicholas. They unfortunately get killed by a cart and find themselves in Hell where Lucifer and his demons duly torment them. They are saved by a prayer which helps them to climb the stairway to Paradise. Saint Peter, taken in by the applicants' disguise, lets them in. When the two true Saints show up, trouble follows. Luckily, thanks to the intervention of the Virgin Mary, the two friends are acquitted at their celestial trial and allowed to return to Earth.

Ginette, a Parisian seamstress, lives poorly but happily with her musician lover. When Count la Ferronnière offers to teach her the manners and behaviours that will open her the doors to a richer world, she quickly chooses wealth over love.

Tartarin is the local hero in the small provincial town of Tarascon. He shows off about imaginary adventures in Africa, where he has never been, as a Lion Hunter, which he is only in his imagination. Even though the locals know he has never been to Africa, they keep hoping he will leave one day. After a misunderstanding, and much gossip, everyone thinks that Tartarin plans to actually take the trip.

An architect whose wife has cheated on him withdraws to a solitary life in a cave, but somehow manages to keep au courant with what is going on.