All My Husbands

The complications begin as Monsieur Barillon, wealthy bachelor about town, is about to be married to the lovely Virginie, but she is in love with the poor but passionate Patrice

Virginie's mother, Madame Jambart, is a widow. Her husband, a fisherman, was supposedly lost at sea two years earlier

During the wedding ceremony, a drunken clerk makes a mistake in the register, and Barillon ends up married to Madame Jambart instead of to her daughter!

Annulment procedures are started by Planturel, the mayor, but in the meantime, Emile, Madame Jambart's first husband, shows up and threatens to kill everyone in sight, including the mayor

Patrice still pursues Virginie, while Madame sets up a very strange menage-a-trois with her two husbands

After a maelstrom of confusion and chaos, everything is finally resolved when the same drunken clerk makes yet another mistake and annuls the "wrong" marriage

Translated and adapted by J Paul Marcoux