Michel is a Belgian inventor. He cares for his father, a paralysed writer, is married to a Congolese woman and is the father of an interracial child whom he reassures as to his parentage. He discovers at the age of 41 that he was adopted, actually having been born in Sainte-Cécile, Quebec. In the summer of 2000, he travels to Quebec, supposedly to sell some of his inventions. While on a near-impossible quest to find his birth family in the town where he was born, he crosses paths with Louis Legros, son of another inventor, in a meeting which will change their lives.

A young Russian aristocrat, Baron Fyodor Jeremin, volunteers to serve with a Dragon squadron to impress the girl who rejected his love. Just at this time the 1863 insurrection explodes in Poland. He enlists to serve in the army being sent to suppress the revolt. He believes that now it's enough to defeat the Poles, become an officer and hero, get a bunch of medals, and then return and lay all of this at the feet of her beloved. However, the "little Polish war" looks completely different to the way that young Jeremin imagined it to be. In course of time, he learns to be on the wrong side. But there is no escape - he must kill or he will be killed. What's more, he falls in love with a beautiful Polish girl...