George Devereaux, a prominent French politician, lives a life of debauchery, until he is arrested in New York for sexually assaulting a hotel maid.

Paris, 1925. Bénédict Masson, bookbinder and poet, is secretly in love with his neighbor, Christine. Christine works at the strange Coulteray mansion where the marquise accuses her husband of being a vampire. But Bénédict has other preoccupations: six of his apprentices have disappeared without a trace.