As part of an intergalactic coalition, a well-meaning space alien volunteers to bring a message of self-actualization and harmony with nature to the one planet rejected by all her peers as incorrigible: Earth.

In this complex chronicle of the evolution of a provincial family's life, the story follows three generations of at least two neighboring families from the 1890s to the 1970s. In one of many related tales, a man who was engaged to the older daughter of a farmer elopes with the younger one. After many years and the birth of five children, the man leaves his wife and family for the bright lights of the city but continues turning up from time to time, until he is finally taken into the home of one of his sons when he is a quite old man. The complex interactions of the legitimate and illegitimate children of a womanizing miner give rise to yet another set of related stories.

Dr. Brézé and his sons, all surgeons with limited abilities fight any competition on their sector with all means.

A writer is reunited with an old childhood friend, who gives him the opportunity to devise a heist.

Didier is an embarrassed lover and husband when his young mistress, whom he had just left, attempts suicide and is adopted by her family while she recovers. The situation becomes very tense when everyone (husband, wife, children and mistress) goes on vacation together. Didier asks his wife for a divorce after succumbing to his mistress again, but that's not the end of the trouble.