A group of men of differing circumstances and personalities gather at a monastery to undergo a course of spiritual reappraisal. They comprise of a candle-maker, a politician, an ex-prisoner, a novelist and a petty thief trying to elude the police. All have their own spiritual problems to solve, except the thief. The politician, a former partisan leader, suffers the remorse of causing the deaths of three innocent men on a sabotage mission; he is set for the priesthood. The prisoner, a sick and possibly dying man, lacks the courage to visit his wife who is now happily remarried; his padre has advised him to leave her alone. The novelist bears the moral responsibility for offences committed by young people led astray by his writings; he earns a lot for his work, but is too demoralized to continue. Then the candle-maker - miserly, smooth-talking and bigoted - is unlikely to receive any benefit from his retreat to the monastery...