Milly Mathis

The brave notary Valentin Parpevielle has many problems with his young wife Moune, who has fallen in love with a crook count.

On his wedding night with Hilda Bergmann, the daughter of a swedish chemist, the young and rich american Willy Keanton is stabbed by an unidentified masked man. He kidnaps the young woman, who is found later on by the count Robert d'Arbel. The detective Jacques Miral, nicknamed « the pointed tower's ferret » is put in charge of the case. Soon, he discovers that an international bandit, Méphisto, seeks to seize the formula of a process against asphyxiating gas, invented by professor Bergmann. The struggle is tough between Miral and the uncatchable Méphisto. Monique Aubray, Keanton's secretary and engaged to the detective, the Nostradamus stallholders and the « mastiff of Bordeaux », and the famous novelist Fortuné Bidon are also involved in the case...

Old friends of Vera Vronsky remind her of her past and try to blackmail her.

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.

A woman suffers ill repute when she deserts her husband for a fling with an adventurer and gives the lover jewelry to pay the hotel bill. Will the husband be understanding and forgive her?

After finding and adopting a child, a man gets a job at an all-girls school which doesn't allow families. Once the girls find the baby, they become his forty little mothers. At the same time, the child's true mother searches for him.

In the 30s, a small village in the Provence is losing its inhabitants because young people prefer to go to the city to find easy jobs and escape from being farmers living in relative poverty. Only a few old people and the poacher Panturle remain. Panturle dreams of bringing the village back to life, finding a wife, founding a family and work as a farmer. One day, the village is visited by a traveling knife-grinder, Urbain Gedemus and a young woman, Arsule. Gedemus treats Arsule like a slave, but Arsule accept this because she has nowhere to go and -we guess- her 'work' with Gedemus is the last thing that saves her from being a prostitute. When she meets Panturle and knows about his dreams, she escapes from Gedemus and decides to stay with him. Together, they start a new life, made of hard farming work but mostly of happiness to have each other, fulfilling the earlier dreams of Panturle. Can anything break the happiness of their new life?

A provincial tour fails without money in an abandoned theater in the capital and puts on a review under the sign of optimism.