By mutual agreement, a man and a woman are separated to allow the wife to join her lover.

Taking advantage of their uncle's absence, André and Raymond Rafet organize a New Year's Eve party at his house. The uncle returns unexpectedly, disturbs the party, threatens his nephews to disinherit them and then locks himself in his office. A few minutes later, he is found dead, poisoned.

The film depicts events between the Fashoda crisis in 1898 and the 1904 signing of the Entente Cordiale creating an alliance between Britain and France and ending their historic rivalry. It was based on the book King Edward VII and His Times by André Maurois. It was made with an eye to its propaganda value, following the Munich Agreement of September 1938 and in anticipation of the outbreak of a Second World War which would test the bonds between Britain and France in a conflict with Nazi Germany.

Three "spinsters" focus their attention very narrowly on their nephew, in his first phase of adulthood. Éloi, handicapped by his shyness, behaves a bit awkwardly. He falls under the unfortunate influence of a couple of haddocks. The love of a pretty blonde woman will save him from this embarrassment.