Paul Castanet

As Jean is walking across the countryside in search of work, he helps and befriends a young woman, Françoise, who is having trouble controlling the cow that she is leading. Jean finds work at a local farm, but he soon finds himself caught in the middle of the conflicts in Françoise's family.

Adapted from Hugo's eponym novel, the story concerns a Guernseyman named Gilliatt, a social outcast who falls in love with Deruchette, the niece of a local shipowner, Mess Lethierry. When Lethierry's ship is wrecked on the Roches Douvres, a perilous reef, Deruchette promises to marry whomever can salvage the ship's steam engine. Gilliatt eagerly volunteers, and the story follows both his physical trials and tribulations.

At trial the prosecuting attorney makes a startling confession: the defendant is his son whose pitiful fate led him to murder. The attorney left the young man's pregnant mother, and the unwed poor thing had to fight against a hostile world.

Users of the postal service aren't very happy that Onésime spends his work time writing love letters to a lovely lady. Understandably, the woman's husband doesn't take it very well either. To escape his wrath, Onésime can think of nothing better than slipping into the mail duct. And it's pneumatic.

Onésime came down and threw himself on stage, starting into the great aria at which he excelled. We must say, in respect for the truth, that he earned what critics calls "the estimated success": Onésime, who has the voice of a barrel salesman, sings like the pulley in a well.

While accompanying his lady to a fashionable casino, Onésime hears someone playing an overpowering waltz on a mandolin, and he starts dancing with his lady. Everyone, from the kitchen hands to the chef, dance until their out of breath.