(1986; Manon des sources, French) Ten years after Jean Cadoret's death, sometime between the world wars, the spring from Romarius feeds into Galinette "Ugolin" Soubeyran's (Daniel Auteuil) carnation gardens. In the hills roams Manon (Emmanuelle Beart), a shepherdess with her herd of goats, who watches from her tree perch the new schoolteacher, Bernard Olivier (Hippolyte Girardot), from the village of Aubagne, eating his lunch beneath her while looking for minerals, accidentally leaving behind his knife.

She plays her father's harmonica; her mother, who has returned to singing in operas, sends her letters. Watching while the gorgeous golden girl bathes in a waterhole, Ugolin unseen on a cliff gazes with yearning down upon her, dancing in the sunlight.

Once again César "Le Papet" (Yves Montand) urges his nephew to marry, for at 30 he is the last remaining member of the Soubeyrans with a chance to pass on the family name. Other family relations foolishly married their cousins (even rabbits know better), resulting in two madwomen and three suicides (including Galinette's father). Crazy with love sickness - "She's pretty, and I'm ugly" - Ugolin at first refuses to tell Papet his secret, only that the girl though poor reads books (attractive and educated, Papet remarks, is not a good combination for a wife), until finally unable to keep it to himself whispers through the keyhole that he's in love with the hunchback's daughter.

Reminded of Florette when he sees Manon, Papet gives Galinette his consent; Ugolin then seeks his uncle's advice for courting the maid. Wearing a good suit of clothes for hunting to display his wealth, Ugolin introduces himself to Manon as "your father's friend," not realizing that she had seen him and César unplugging the spring shortly after her father's death; as she runs off, screaming, he shouts his declaration of love. Forlorn he finds one of her ribbons and sews it into the skin of his chest above his heart.

With vengeance filling her breast, Manon accidentally discovers inside a cavern the source of the spring feeding Ugolin's 15,000 flowers and the village's fountain; she blocks it up. Without water from the spring irrigating the carnations, Ugolin must haul it with his mule; desperately he prays for forgiveness from Jean's spirit.

Aubagne's mayor contacts a rural-engineering expert, who attempts to explain in technical terms various orographic theories as to why the water has ceased flowing without being able to answer the demands from ignorant peasants (demanding he turn the water back on) when it will resume; he promises to send a water truck for their immediate needs.

With everyone in attendance at church, even the cynical intellectuals and Manon, the priest sarcastically welcomes them all for being "full of faith and repentance today," before inquiring (making reference to a plague that threatened a king of Thebes): "Is there a criminal among us?" For her being an innocent orphan (though her mother is alive), the villagers beseech Manon to join the religious procession and offer her prayer to restore the water; she first extracts her revenge.

The cynics of Aubagne will long debate whether it was a miracle or coincidence. Director Claude Berri's companion cinema and conclusion to Jean de Florette brings this very satisfying, old-fashioned drama of double-tragedy full circle. The blind, aged Delphine (Yvonne Gamy) delivers the terrible, final, ironic blow to César.

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