René, a bank employee, is suspected of theft and fired from his job. It borders on the worst by following in the footsteps of a misfit, Alexandre. A series of circumstances lead him to save little Gérard, the bank manager's grandson, from a fire. The child becomes attached to René, who manages to discover the real culprit of the theft.

Comte de Larzac, an aging seducer, leaves Paris for Lannemezan. Accompanied by his friend Charmeuil, he goes there to acknowledge the paternity of Jean, a twenty-year old young man who knows nothing about his biological father. Jean, after falling for Jeanne, the daughter of a farmer, now courts Georgina, a middle-class woman of Romanian origin. After Father Jocasse has told Jean that he is Comte de Larzac's son, the young man follows his father to Paris. But he finds it hard to comply with the usages of high society and when his father refuses to consent to his marriage with Georgina, he returns to Lannemezan. Georgina is so upset by the count's refusal that she comes to see him and tells him very candidly about her past life. Moved by her plea, de Larzac drives her back to Lannemezan so that she can marry Jean. What was not expected is that, during the trip, they discover they are close to each other.

The Paladines write crime novels together. In a cinema, they happen to see a report on the consequences of a shipwreck in which Lieutenant Dupuis tells about the death of an old man in the lifeboat carrying the survivors. Husband and wife agree that this could be the starting point of a new story and go and see Dupuis to get more details about the drama. When they come to his hotel Dupuis is dead with a bullet in his head. Police characterizes the death as suicide but Paladine has found a train ticket in the dead man's pocket. With his wife he takes the train to the specified destination, somewhere in the provinces...