On August 24, 1944, the day Paris was liberated, Maurice saw his cell door open. Although he had spent the whole war "in the shadows", it was not for acts of resistance, but for stealing a bicycle. His contact with the free world was quite brutal. The queues he observed at the butcher's gave him an idea. With the help of his childhood friend Roland, who has lost everything gambling-wise, he steals "Berlingot", the horse from a delivery car, and offers it for sale on the black market. But the "nag" is not of the same opinion.

At the end of the 19th century, during a ball in Joinville, on the outskirts of Paris, Georges, a former delinquent working as a carpenter, meets Marie, a young woman connected to a criminal gang.