Having become a beggar on the streets, Alexis recollects his love with a rich girl, Eva, who gave him as a present the accordion he always wanted. When she got pregnant, Alexis offered to disappear from her life so that she wouldn't have to have an abortion. Then she married a loser, a man of aristocratic origin, who soon abandoned her for a cabaret woman, also embezzling a large part of her fortune. Alexis kidnaps his child and ends up in prison. Many years later, he is released from prison and follows, from a distance, his daughter's life.