Leaping forward twenty years, the trilo'gy 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.
"Merlusse" is French schoolboy slang for codfish, and M. Blanchard, a professor at a certain lycée, was known to his victims by that name. On Christmas eve, when some twenty of the students—orphans, foreigners or just plain "unwanteds"—had to remain in the boarding school, Merlusse is placed...
