Episodes in the lives of two country girls at school in Paris and their opinions.

Pedro returns to the castle of his childhood, inhabited by his uncle, an indifferent being who scarcely notices his presence. At the castle, Pedro wanders between the park and the salons, playing the songs he composed on the guitar. He notices strange people around the castle.

Lamiel is a poor orphan girl who climbs to the social elite in this 19th-century costume drama. A doctor lives vicariously through Anna as he oversees the progress of his female protégé. Lamiel finds love with a young thief who steals into her bedroom after her marriage to a penniless count, and the two experience a romantic rendezvous of forbidden love after Lamiel goes from being a poor peasant woman to living a life of comparative luxury.

A French resistance group frees twelve captured soldiers from a German prison camp, but apparently there is an additional prisoner among them who is suspected of being an enemy spy.

Near the end of World War II, Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz receives orders to burn down Paris if it becomes clear the Allies are going to invade, or if he cannot maintain control of the city. After much contemplation Choltitz decides to ignore his orders, enraging the Germans and giving hope to various resistance factions that the city will be liberated. Choltitz, along with Swedish diplomat Raoul Nordling, helps a resistance leader organize his forces.

Josepha is on the verge eighteen living with her drunken washed up actor uncle. She longs for the companionship of a group of her mo-ped riding peers who dabble in activities on the shady side of a legal dividing line. In order to get the semi-delinquent group to accept her, Josepha runs to the police with a tall tale about the local druggist, Savary. The police are looking for a sex murderer, and Josepha insists Savary is their man. What she does not know, however, can do her considerable damage.

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.

Denis, a hypersensitive teenager, is revolted both against his distant, pretentious, well-to-do parents and their superficial society firends and the stiff, intolerant catholic establishment in which he studies. Fortunately,he has an open-minded philosophy teacher, Father Philippe de Maubrun, who understands him and supports him in his distress.