Her father having served a prison sentence, there is unending gossiping about Therese's family. Unable to put up with it any longer, the young woman leaves her native village for the canton of Bern where she manages to be hired by Anton Muller, a wealthy, authoritarian farmer. Under the young woman's spell, Anton wants to make his servant his mistress but Thérèse refuses energetically.. Later on, she nevertheless accepts to marry Anton. On the wedding day, she meets Gottfried, her bridegroom's son, and they instantly fall passionately in love with each other.

While on a longer business trip, a wannabe poet urges his beautiful but more simple wife to answer his overly swollen love letters. With no idea how to respond she forwards the letters to a new young school teacher to use his answers instead...

A policeman is not convinced that the prime suspect in a murder case is realty guilty and so decides to reinvestigate the case, despite the lack of co-operation from locals.