Fanny

César is the proprietor of a waterfront tavern in the port city of Marseilles; Panisse, a wealthy sailmaker, is his best friend. César is arrogant but appealing; Panisse is blustery and vain but generous to a fault. César has a nineteen-year-old son, Marius, who is torn between his love for his sweetheart Fanny and his passion for the sea. If he stays at home with Fanny – as César wants him to do – he will starve his hunger for mystery and adventure. On an impulse he signs up for a five-year voyage and his father disowns him. Fanny, however, realizes that she must let Marius follow his dream if their love is to last. No sooner has he gone off to sea but Fanny discovers she is pregnant.

Panisse has frequently made proposals of marriage to Fanny in the past, and now he intuitively senses her predicament. Under pressure from her mother Honorine, she turns to him in desperation. He is delighted at the prospect of having an heir, and they are married. He alters the sign above his shop door: “Panisse & Son.”

César and Panisse together take charge of the little boy’s upbringing – and of keeping the neighbors in the dark about Cesario's true paternity. But on the boy’s first birthday, Marius returns to claim both Fanny and his child. César, outraged, drives him away.

Now it is twelve years later. Like his father, thirteen-year-old Cesario longs for adventures at sea. When he runs away from home to join Marius, a fatal blow is dealt to the ailing and aged Panisse. Marius brings the boy back home to the dying man’s bedside, cheering Panisse’s last moments. His deathbed wish is that Fanny and Marius should be reunited, and that César should be reconciled with his own son.