A wealthy baron, without offspring, who knows death is approaching, wants to adopt a man who kept him alive a bit longer, when he was almost run over by a horse drawn cart.

The film is a 125-minute, black-and-white biography of French priest and diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838), who served for 50 years under five different French regimes: the Absolute Monarchy, the Revolution, the Consulate, the Empire, and the Constitutional Monarchy. Its title comes from one of the main historical nicknames for Talleyrand, that he shares with demon king Asmodeus and English poet Lord Byron.

Dominique, a medical student, works in a cinema to help her friend Simone Lambert, a pharmacy student. Big scandal in his bourgeois-minded family when we learn and he works and he has a friend. His father chases him away brutally. Dominique is going to live with Simone, in her sixth grade. From that day on, she receives a visit from a mysterious character who calls himself a novelist and who helps her to meet the needs of her household. Dominique discovers that this character is none other than his father: he no longer understands.

While he was about to end his life, Baron de Cantenac wanted to return one last time to the land of his ancestors. He then discovers a treasure that he will strive to use to revive his village.

A husband who had divorced twice because he had been betrayed by his former wives, takes his precautions to prevent the deed from happening a third time. And yet it does.

Is it because his father was a groom that Adhémar Pomme has a long horse head and a horse- toothed smile? Maybe but the fact is that his head has invariably caused laughter whatever the circumstances, which is the tragedy of his life. After having worked as an undertaker, a theater prompter, a casino bouncer, and so on, and failing at each job, he applies out of desperation to an institution where those rejected for physical reasons can hide and live together. But Adhémar immediately starts... laughing at them and gets kicked out as a result! In the end though, he finds his way as a circus artist.

Modest fifty-something, Mr. Perle, is a baker in a small provincial town. He lives there with an authoritarian woman and her cousin, a parasite who poisons his existence. A Parisian notary writes to the hero to ask him to come and take possession of an inheritance. In Paris, Perle meets a pretty adventuress.

Martial, Colette 's husband, is madly jealous. One day, he catches his wife writing a letter and he does want to know what this message contains, to no avail.

A small-town policeman is informed that "naked women" are dancing in a revue at a local variety theater. Being the guardian of public morals that he is, he decides to stroll on down there and check it out for himself.

At the start of the First World War, two next-door neighbors find themselves companions in misfortune. Faced with the horror of the trenches and the fear of death, they grow closer and become friends. But will these strong feelings that the war engendered survive a return to daily monotony?