Jean-Joachim Goriot, a merchant who got rich during the Revolution, is obsessed with the love of his two daughters, whose social promotion he wants. He endows them richly, ruins himself to pay their debts, but Delphine and Anastasie do not return his affection and abandon him at the time of his death to run to a big ball.

During the Occupation, a boarding school in Moulins was placed under the rule of a headmistress committed to collaboration. It is within these walls that Michel, Arthur and Franck, escaped prisoners seeking to cross the demarcation line, find themselves stranded. Three boarders, Manouche, Jo and La Tigresse, discreetly devote themselves to them. Until the day when, aware of the danger, they alert the Resistance through the intermediary of a warden. The three men cross into the free zone, and Michel promises to find Manouche.