Rellys

Satire of publishing circles, featuring a ferocious boss, Moscat, a successful but handsome author, Maréchal, another successful but bitter author, Bourgine, a writer plagued with ambition, Brégaillon and the hero, Marc Fournier Zola Prize winner. Naive, the latter quickly becomes formidable, especially since his wife's infidelities have provided him with the material for a new novel.

Leaping forward twenty years, the trilogy continues with the death of Fanny's husband, Panisse, and the discovery of her secret by her son, Césariot. The young man resolves to track down his biological father, Marius, whose life has been fraught with calamity and poverty.

Nicolas, the owner of a small café, has had enough of his current life. Business-wise, customers are more and more scarce. As for the love side, the situation is not any better as Jacqueline, his charming wife, not content to be spendthrift, might well be cheating on him.. To escape this harrowing reality Nicolas decides to simulate his suicide and disappears. Lucky or unlucky draw? Both in fact as, on the one hand, Nicolas finds serenity but, on the other he wins a huge sum of money in a lottery. How will he manage to get the money now?

In the Cévennes, Tabusse is a figure of the village. Angry and but also in love, he goes through many adventures.

Jean Duclos has extraordinary adventures after taking the train and mistakenly taking the luggage of a young dancer, Lola Wanda. An oil tycoon appoints him as a proxy for his future company, and then he marries his beautiful cousin, Suzy.

A watchman with a sensitive heart, Fernand falls in love with Violette and Pervenche, two of the daughters of his boss, Maître Arno. At a bullfight starring three attractive Spaniards, the girls and their sister Marguerite - with whom Fernand's companion Rémy is in love - compete in charm, to the despair of both suitors. Followed by Marina, a pretty girl who seems to take a keen interest in Fernand, the two friends decide to retire to Les Martigues, far from their belles. But soon annoyed by Marina's insistence, Fernand returns to Maître Arno's manade, while Rémy decides to become a bullfighter to win back Marguerite.

As the driver of a garbage truck in Arles, Marc-Antoine leads a quiet life with his wife, Mélanie, and their two children. When Amédée's "Fanny" is stolen from the bouliste club, Marc-Antoine offers to repaint another one. As soon as the work is finished, he becomes a local celebrity and, intoxicated by his new-found fame, leaves his family to go with Hélène, the young waitress, to his friend Septime's house in the Camargue to take up painting. Eventually, Marc-Antoine realizes that he is dissatisfied and that his success seems dishonest. He realizes that happiness awaits him with his wife, children and friends, and resumes his simple life without remorse.

"Merlusse" is French schoolboy slang for codfish, and M. Blanchard, a professor at a certain lycée, was known to his victims by that name. On Christmas Eve, when some twenty of the students—orphans, foreigners or just plain "unwanteds"—had to remain in the boarding school, Merlusse is placed in charge. His glass eye glares at them stonily, his good one with no less severity. He sets them to tasks, marches like a proctor up and down the aisles, exacts to the utmost the last measure of discipline. But when the youngsters awake in the morning, there are toys by each bed in the dormitory and M. Blanchard, no longer to be called Merlusse, is exposed for the softhearted fraud he is.