In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers. He writes a few columns for the Catholic paper, and soon workers are listening and the powerful are in an uproar. He's expelled from the Catholic party, so he starts the Christian Democrats and is elected to Parliament. After Rome disciplines him, he must choose between two callings, as priest and as champion of workers. In subplots, a courageous young woman falls in love with a socialist and survives a shop foreman's rape; children die; prelates play billiards.

Story about the young Balthazar thrown from one remarkable event to the other. On his way through a plague hit the landscape, he meets the Kabbalists, priests - and himself.

A famous surgeon is beaten by drunken bullies, loses his memory and cannot recollect who he was before. He gets to a village, lives in a not so well to do family and becomes the Quack - he slowly regains his talent for medicine and saves the lives of several village patients.

Historical panorama of the history of Silesia, from the period of the uprisings to the present day, shown through the fate of five miners. Confrontation of attitudes in the face of danger during a disaster at a mine.

The story of a worker who was dismissed for inconvenience to management for making justified and necessary criticisms of the factory's operations.

After years of working in the city, Róża returns to the countryside. The property she has accumulated draws the attention of local bachelors.

An engineer comes home from abroad to his waiting wife. After some time, his second wife, an Italian one, joins him. For a small town, such a triangle will turn out to be unacceptable, especially since the spouses live peacefully under one roof.

A young public servant receives a house as a wedding gift, but upon arriving he finds only the doors, a military barrack and a tank hidden underground.