September 1960: on a purely punitive basis, eight scouts must climb the solid mass of Brévent to 2500 meters of altitude. The so beautiful and so majestic mountain which draws up face them very quickly reveals dangerous. All the techniques of orientation learned at the scouts will do nothing there. The teenagers find themselves delivered to themselves. Lost in the abrupt throats, the eight boys are confronted cold, with the hunger and the fear.

Lucien Hastier, known as "Lulu", is a locksmith in La Courneuve and a communist activist. He had never known his parents and had been raised by the public assistance, a notary comes to announce that his father died and left him an extraordinary inheritance: a castle, a title of duke and a royal filiation. But problems arise, the deceased duke has left heavy debts and suitors to the title.

Julien, a boy in the sixth grade, was badly depressed by the divorce of his parents. But he soon found that half of the class had come from broken families.