Pierre and Jean are the sons of Gerome Roland, a jeweller who has retired to Le Havre, and his wife Louise. Pierre works as a doctor, and Jean is a lawyer. It recounts the story of a middle-class French family whose lives are changed when Leon Marechal, a deceased family friend, leaves his inheritance to Jean. This provokes Pierre to doubt the fidelity of his mother and the legitimacy of his brother. In his anguish, most notably shown during family meals, he tortures her with allusions to the past that he has now uncovered