Dante's Divine Comedy in a TV version by Michel Tréguer.

A highly qualified worker, exercising his trade as an artist, sees his family and professional life turned upside down by the installation of a robot machine in his workshop.

Journalist Claude Leroy (Jacques Champreux) reports that a secret society, The Companions of Baal, is behind a hold-up in the small town of Blaingirey. They are led by the Grand Maître Hubert de Mauvouloir (Jean Martin). An adorant of Lucifer, he aims to enslave the world. Accompanied by their acolyte, Pierrot Robichat (Gérard Zimmermann), and a young girl, Françoise Cordier (Claire Nadeau), Claude Leroy is determined to finally reveal the mysteries of the group's criminal enterprise.

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.