After being saved from suicide due to an unhappy marriage, Marie hesitates between two other men, but lands up rejoining her husband in the colonies as she now expects a baby.

Debt-ridden painter Michel is overcome with joy at discovering that he has just won 1 million florins in the Dutch lottery, but almost immediately, he discovers that his softhearted girlfriend, Béatrice, has given away his jacket containing the winning ticket to an elderly petty thief. Soon Michel, Beatrice and Michel's artistic rival, Prosper, are hurtling through the streets of Paris on the trail of the missing jacket.

Blaireau, a poacher, is imprisoned for an offense he didn't commit. An ambitious lawyer tries to exculpate and glorify him. But, once he's released, this major philosopher destroys in just a few hours the prestige painstakingly built by his liberator.

A young man from a good family abandons the young girl he has seduced, but finally marries her after being brought back to the right path by the young brother of the neglected woman.

In 1842, during the conquest of Algeria Sidonie Panache disguised as a Soave runs away with her lover who is doing his military service there.

Rosine, who spends her time as a model, has to deal with the advances of a disreputable young man.

A woman is accused of the murder of her husband, who was jealous and brutal. Her lawyer manages to get her acquitted and they get married in the end.

A ruined banker is abandoned by his mistress. He commits suicide after entrusting a prostitute with twenty-thousand francs. The money changes hands. A crook is arrested in the house of an an actress he had fooled. In a luxury hotel, a typist kills her lover's wife. The trial of the murderer is followed by the bankruptcy of another financier and the money finally returns to the mistress of a suicide in the restaurant in which she had first appeared.

Hopes and love and ambitions and friendship in a group of young jazz-loving Parisians.