In a small Italian village live a group of men, each as miscreant as the next. Among them is the baker, violent and miserly. One day, to benefit from an inheritance, he has to distribute fifty kilos of bread a day to the poor for five years. At the moment of distribution, a dog comes along and takes a loaf of bread in its mouth, to take to an old hermit whom the villagers are convinced "has seen God".

Varen and Bob are a couple of buddies who get mixed up with a white-slave trader. Pursued by a pair of mob-connected brothers, Bob is killed. Varen retaliates by killing one of the brothers, then enlists the aid of his friend Agnès in tracking down the remaining sibling.

Cardinal Mazarin dies, leaving a power vacuum in which the young Louis asserts his intention to govern as well as rule. Mazarin's fiscal advisor, Colbert, warns against Fouquet, the Superintendant who has been systematically looting the treasury and wants to be prime minister. Fouquet believes Louis will soon tire of exercizing power and overplays his hand by offering a bribe to Louis' mistress to be his ally. She reports this to the king who arrests Fouquet. Louis and Colbert design a brilliant strategy to keep merchants making money, nobles in debt, the urban poor working and fed, and peasants untaxed.