The merry Vigoulette wants to escape the yoke of his wife and asks to be recalled to a barracks regiment in Nice. Every night, he and his friend Poupardin have a great time. But one evening, he is missing. Fortunately his wife, who had arrived to spy on him, takes her place in the bedroom.

A film based upon the life of Vidocq, the famous adventurer, who, after numerous prison escapes ceased being a crook, a thief and a counterfeiter, and was employed by Pasquier’s government’istry as director of the crime-fighting Sûreté Nationale.

Based on true facts, a news item which was widely talked about in the nineteenth century, this is the story of a wife who might have poisoned her husband .