Summary
Within the gilded cage of a French diplomat's country estate, Emile Coullard meticulously crafts a trade agreement destined to reshape European markets. Enter Belloc—a serpent in silk gloves—whose arrival unspools threads of deception woven decades earlier. The diplomat's wife, Marguerite, recognizes her tormentor: the man who exploited her convent innocence, leaving an illegitimate son, Fernand. Now a dissolute alcoholic raised by a dying attorney, Fernand becomes Coullard's unwitting secretary under Marguerite's desperate orchestration. Belloc's true motive surfaces—to pilfer the agreement for stock market profiteering. Cornering Marguerite, he blackmails her into opening the safe with threats of exposure. Fernand intervenes in a violent scuffle, culminating in Belloc's fatal plunge through a shattered window. When Coullard uncovers the layered betrayals—his wife's concealed past and their son's patricidal act—he offers absolution, choosing compassion over condemnation amidst the wreckage.
Synopsis
Prominent French diplomat Emile Coullard is preparing an important international trade agreement. When Belloc appears at Coullard's country home to help prepare the document, it becomes evident that Belloc had met Marguerite, Coullard's charming wife, before. It later develops that Belloc had deceived and taken advantage of Marguerite when she was an innocent girl just out of a convent. Fernand, the illegitimate product of the union, had been raised by her friend, attorney De Brionne who, on his deathbed, declares that henceforth Marguerite should care for her grown child, now a notorious drinker. Marguerite arranges for Coullard to take Fernand as his secretary. Meanwhile, Belloc attempts to obtain the secret agreement in order to sell the information to a stock brokerage that could then make a killing on the market. Belloc forces Marguerite to open the safe by threatening to expose her past. A fight ensues with Fernand, and in attempting to escape, Belloc falls from a window to his death. Coullard eventually discovers everything, but forgives Marguerite of her past mistakes.
