Pierre, an idealistic twenty-year-old man, leaves his home in a remote district of the Pyrenees to travel to Paris, hoping to break away from his restrictive provincial life. Arriving in the French capital, he turns to the only person he knows in the city, Evelyne, a middle aged nurse, whom he had briefly met when working as a stretcher-bearer at Lourdes. She is vague and distracted, being preoccupied by the paralyzed mother with whom she lives. Nevertheless, she manages to get Pierre a job in the kitchen of a hospital. He finds somewhere to stay and, in order to fulfill his childhood dream, buys a book on how to become an actor.