Orgon is a man of property duped by the false piety of the penniless Tartuffe. Orgon takes him into his house, believing him a paragon of virtue. Orgon orders his daughter to reject her fiancé and marry Tartuffe. First Dorine, the family servant, tries a strategy to avert the marriage; then Orgon's son tries his hand. They anger Orgon, and to prove paternal power, he disinherits his son and makes Tartuffe his heir. Next Orgon's wife tries to bring her husband insight, a stratagem that partially backfires. With the bailiff at the door ordering Orgon to vacate his own home and with Tartuffe at court to prove Orgon's a traitor, all seems lost.

1730: shortly after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, women refusing to abjure Protestantism are imprisoned in the Tower of Constance. Among them, Marie Durand, who would later become an icon of the Huguenots. All these women consumed by loneliness, illness and fear cling to only one idea: to resist.