In the late 19th century, a chambermaid from Paris relocates to a remote household in Provence, engages in trysts and finds herself enraptured with a coach driver.

Celestine has a new job as a chambermaid for the quirky M. Monteil, his wife and her father. When the father dies, Celestine decides to quit her job and leave, but when a young girl is raped and murdered, Celestine believes that the Monteils' groundskeeper, Joseph, is guilty, and stays on in order to prove it. She uses her sexuality and the promise of marriage to get Joseph to confess -- but things do not go as planned.

The story of a Antoine, a physician who was exiled to China in the 1930's due to his drug habit.

Celestine, the chamber-maid, has a new job in the country, at the Lanlaires. She has decided to use her beauty to seduce a wealthy man, but Mr. Lanlaire is not a right choice: the house is firmly controlled by Madame Lanlaire, helped by the strange valet Joseph. Then she tries the neighbour, former officer Mauger. This seems to work. But soon the son of the Lanlaires comes back. He is young, attractive and does not share his mother's antirepublican opinions. So Celestine's beauty attracts Captain Mauger, young Georges Lanlaire, and Joseph. Three men, from three different social classes, with three different conceptions of life. Will Celestine be able to convince Georges of her sincerity?

Nouveau riche Isidore Lechat, who lives in a castle in the south of France, believes that business is the most important thing, but remains attached to his children. Lechat, who does not let his wife appear at banquets because of her slovenly appearance, begins an affair in Paris with Celeste St. Jean, a friend of his dissolute son Xavier. Lechat offers to pay Xavier's debts if he gets his friend's father, the Minister of War, to lift restrictions on the operation of a mine in French Africa which Lechat optioned.

Gianina, a young Romanian, works as a housekeeper for a bourgeois family in Bordeaux. In the evenings, she rehearses the role of a maid with an amateur theater troupe in an adaptation of The Diary of a Chambermaid by Octave Mirbeau. She takes care of Louen, her employers’ son, while her own daughter is growing up far from her, in Romania. The maternal absence deepens into a wound but, as Christmas approaches, the promise of a reunion begins to take shape.