A girl, Marie, who got engaged to a boy who is leaving for military training (thirteen days) wins two million on the raffle, thanks to an older man, Claude, whom she calls her good luck …

Misfortunes and disarray of the little clown Leroy who is upstaged by a comrade, Bertini, and sees himself abandoned by his girlfriend Ginette, preferring his collaborator to him.

They are three fishermen from the Old Port: Toinet, Pénible and Girelle. Two of them are in love with two pretty merchants. Not confident in their natural seduction, they decide to use drastic measures to be sure to attract and sustain the attention of these young ladies. This is how they approach them by posing as wealthy industrialists. But now the young girls, not to be outdone, present themselves as film actresses.

Desiring to give his compatriots a taste for laughter, a comic Marseilles founds a club with friends whose joke is the reason for living and tries to breathe new life into the sleeping city.

In this little Provencal village, a new baker, Aimable, settles down. His wife Aurelie is beautiful and much younger than he. She departs with a shepherd the night after Aimable produces his first breads. Aimable is so afflicted that he can not work anymore. Therefore, the villagers, who initially laughed at his cuckoldry, take the matter very seriously (they want the bread) and organize a plan to find Aurelie and to bring her back to the bakery.

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.

César runs a bar along Marseilles' port, assisted by his 23-year-old son, Marius. Friends since childhood, Fanny and Marius love each other, but Marius has a secret wanderlust: every ship's whistle stirs a longing for foreign lands. When M. Panisse seeks Fanny's hand in marriage and when a departing clipper needs a deckhand, Marius and Fanny must decide who and what they love most. César, with his generous, wise spirit, tries to guide his son.

The early days of the French Revolution, as seen through the eyes of the ordinary citizens in Marseille and the royal court, including King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.