Charming and quiet, Jack unexpectedly finds himself at the very center of the turbulent life of nineteenth-century Parisian society. As the illegitimate son of an ambitious and self-serving mother, he is forced to go to a boarding school—where, for the first time, he encounters the harsh laws of the adult world. This is how a series of difficult ordeals begins, in which his fate is marred by the tragic indifference of a mother consumed by fame and by the sadistic cruelty of his stepfather.