The Vincennes racetrack on a November Sunday. The horses are in the starting gates. In the turmoil of a crowd fired by the race and possible winnings, a man struggles, cut off from the world. Drowning in the ink of his theories, swallowed up by a world of combinations, figures and forecasts, he experiences the ever renewed crisis of the gambler that ends in the fevrish pounding of the hoofs and the shouts of an ecstatic crowd.