With gun-toting rivals on his tail, a daring bank robber takes refuge in the quiet residential street here he grew up and where his mother, Maniette, still lives. An unscrupulous property developer, Korazy, is buying up the neighborhood to turn it into a gleaming new banking district, but to her son's disgust Maniette leads the inhabitants resistance. Her ingenious methods provoke her boy's admiration, but he fights back with sneaky traps and underhand tricks when Maniette tries to force him to do the right thing just once in his life.

At the end of the last century, in the Cévennes, a valiant officer was taken for a brigand. Brought to defend himself, he kills one of his attackers and seeks refuge in caves where he hides and from which he no longer dares to come out. The devotion of a doctor saves him and he marries the daughter of this one.