The future is bleak for a troubled boy from a broken home in the slums. He runs away when his step father breaks his violin, ending up sleeping in the basement of a music school for poor children.

Jacqueline Floriot is driven from her home by her husband Louis, a deputy attorney of Paris, because of his unjust suspicions regarding her relations with another man. Floriot forbids Jacqueline to see her baby boy, who is dangerously ill, and when informed that the boy believes her dead, she attempts suicide.