On Christmas night, an ex-convict meets a beautiful, married Italian woman who has a lot of things to hide.

A petty thief works his way up the absurd hierarchy of Goto, an archipelago cut off from civilisation by a tumultuous earthquake. His dream is to possess Glossia, a stifled beauty trapped in a loveless marriage to a melancholic dictator.

When his uncle Paul died, Lucien Berlemont inherited a telescope and a sextant, which only aggravated his aversion to the high seas. At the age of 20, he began taking clandestine navigation courses. During his vacations in St-Lunac, even Mr. Dumesnil's daughters struggled to distract him from his marine reveries. But one evening, he inadvertently finds himself locked up with Marie-Angeline; the consequences of this prolonged evening force him to make a decision and commit himself, for better or for worse, to one of the Dumesnil girls.