Jean-Claude Charnay

Cardinal Mazarin dies, leaving a power vacuum in which the young Louis asserts his intention to govern as well as rule. Mazarin's fiscal advisor, Colbert, warns against Fouquet, the Superintendant who has been systematically looting the treasury and wants to be prime minister. Fouquet believes Louis will soon tire of exercizing power and overplays his hand by offering a bribe to Louis' mistress to be his ally. She reports this to the king who arrests Fouquet. Louis and Colbert design a brilliant strategy to keep merchants making money, nobles in debt, the urban poor working and fed, and peasants untaxed.

After a disappointment in love, Alain tells his mistress how he gradually sank into libertinage: from his beginnings with a teacher in art history, then with a supermarket saleswoman, until his discovery libertine parties.

Varen and Bob are a couple of buddies who get mixed up with a white-slave trader. Pursued by a pair of mob-connected brothers, Bob is killed. Varen retaliates by killing one of the brothers, then enlists the aid of his friend Agnès in tracking down the remaining sibling.

A couple who live in the French provinces are surprised to inherit a hotel in Paris. These new owners are determined to sell it, but that's without the charms, vagaries, and clientele of this typical inn implanted in a nice neighborhood.