The play is largely inspired by the famous vaudeville fairy tale La Biche au bois ou le Royaume des fées (The Doe in the Woods or the Kingdom of Fairies) by brothers Charles-Théodore and Jean-Hippolyte Cogniard (1845), particularly its ninth scene (‘The Kingdom of Fish’), although the dramatic action and characters have been modified. Two handwritten copies of the text are known to exist. One, anonymous, acquired by Léopold Dor in 1927 from puppeteer Joanny Durafour, is kept in the Léopold Dor Collection at the Musée des Arts de la Marionnette - Musée Gadagne (Lyon, France), in a notebook that also contains Le Propriétaire and an untitled play. The second, attributed to Louis Josserand, belongs to the Marcel Temporal collection held at the International Puppetry Institute (now the Jacques Félix International Puppetry Centre in Charleville-Mézières, France). The version described here is the one from the Léopold Dor Collection.

Gnafron and Guignol find themselves in a forest, with nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. They decide to lie down under a tree. While they sleep, Péterman waits for his midnight rendezvous with Satan to sign a pact. An imp appears and tells him where to find the treasure Péterman is looking for. But there is one condition: the treasure can only be touched by someone who is unaware of its value. Péterman notices Guignol and Gnafron and invites them to his home. Some time later, he offers them a chance to go and “work in the United States”. They both accept without hesitation.

During their journey, they have several adventures and end up being swallowed by two large fish, which spit them out near the entrance to the mermaids' cave. There, they meet a tench and a carp who want to marry the two strangers. Later, Guignol and Gnafron see the tench and the carp in the form of two young fairies. Péterman arrives in turn, but the fairies turn him into a monster because he wanted to sell his soul to the devil. Guignol and Gnafron then marry the fairies and become kings of the sea.