Pozdnycheff, a young party animal, destroyed by his lightness the marital happiness of one of his childhood friends who committed suicide. Since then, he is haunted by the memory.

After a dreadful incident coupled with an ungovernable paroxysm of violence, a butcher will fall into a downward spiral that will burn to the ground whatever dignity still remained in him.

Philippe Lutcher, an anarchist, fires a shot at Clara Stuart, a famous stage and screen actress, but only wounds her. The star, through affectation and curiosity to know his motives, pleads in his favour at his trial, but he rebuffs her pity. After he has served 18 months in prison, they meet and fall in love.

Mathias Pascal, saddled with a stupid wife and a nagging mother-in-law, leaves home and is extremely lucky at several gambling resorts. He returns home and discovers that a drowned man, fished out of the river, bears an uncanny likeness to him and is being buried by his family as him. This, to him, is a pleasant turn of events and he goes to Rome, where he falls in love with Louise Paleari. Count Papiano, a jealous suitor of Louise's, threatens him with arrest unless he produces credentials to prove his identity.

Inflamed by his readings of chivalric novels, Don Quixote, a knight with a sad face, accompanied by Sancho Panza, a peasant steeped in common sense, decides to set off across the world in search of improbable adventures.