In 1662, ten years after the Fronde, King Louis XIV, then aged 24, was still feeling the insult. When the name of Baron de Fargues came to his ears, the king unleashed a blind vengeance against this amnestied former rebel. But Louise de La Vallière, Louis XIV's mistress, could jeopardize the plan.

Frederic leads a bourgeois life; he is a partner in a small Paris office and is happily married to Helene, a teacher expecting her second child. In the afternoons, Frederic daydreams about other women, but has no intention of taking any action. One day, Chloe, who had been a mistress of an old friend, begins dropping by his office. They meet as friends, irregularly in the afternoons, till eventually Chloe decides to seduce Frederic, causing him a moral dilemma.

A precious work of art from the Italian Renaissance is stolen and passes through many hands before ending up in the shed of the farmhouse of Mr. and Mrs. Dujardin, fishmongers, who are inaugurating their luxury fish shop that very day. But the antique dealers, the free-riders and the bargain-hunters are there. They are jealously careful not to pass on the fruit of their clever investigations to their rivals, for all of them, after a picturesque treasure hunt, know that the Dujardin family own the famous Duranti altarpiece. But where have they hidden it themselves?

Before the flood, a foreigner arrives in a city where the inhabitants indulge in drink, lust, looting and torture. Bewitched by a magician, he looks in vain for an ideal girl before raising the wrath of the gods.

An actress of political torture movies made by her husband has to finish his latest film and arrange a screening for distributors while the husband, who is also secretly an anarchist revolutionary, is away for some resistance operation.

Brumaire, the director of public relations at the Élysée, is trying to boost the rating of his government.

In the year 2222, a former drug dealer is kept in a state of hibernation. Reanimated, he tells his story. Leader in the narcotics market, his situation was prosperous until, during a political change, the government legalized its use.