Ellen Briand

Antoine Mouret, an authoritarian restaurateur, is the head of a large family where, for reasons of interest, people only marry cousins. But some have other plans, Marcus especially when he meets a passing circus girl.

An untiring lady social worker, Émilienne, has as one of her charges a stableman who was wounded by his mistress. Unfortunately, Émilienne's young sister who was helping her at work decides to go away with the stableman.

Marie Leroux, who is married to Charles, an honest, understanding country doctor, lives an uneventful, rather monotonous life.Her husband is a kind man but he does not give her any thrill or excitement. One day, Marie meets Olivier Dumas-Beaulieu, a handsome industrialist, who is in the process of leaving his fiancée Corinne, despite her being pregnant by him. It is easy for the confirmed womanizer he is, to seduce Marie, who very foolishly thinks she has found true love. Shortly afterward Charles is shot dead by Olivier while the two men were having a quarrel about Marie. The latter, who finds the corpse, believes her husband has committed suicide. Which is not the police's opinion and Marie is arrested and condemned to ten years in prison. Annihilated by such unfair treatment and, worse, by the separation from her beloved eight-year-old daughter, she still manages to survive and to serve her sentence.

La Carcasse, an obtuse peasant, lives with his wife Lucie and his father-in-law Tord-cou. At odds with his son-in-law, the Tord-cou takes it into his head to marry Thérésa, the daughter of their neighbor Casimir. But the Carcass, too, feels attracted to the young woman...