Emmanuel Bonavent is the assistant manager of a provincial bank. To give himself the illusion of escaping of the rut he is vegetating in, he extracts 800,000 Francs from the bank. He is not dishonest, but tired of dreaming in front of the shop window along the street he uses every day. Emmannuel borrows this sum to spend a moment on the other side of the window so as to assuage his desires, where they weigh things up, take a drink...After which he would replace the money. But the scandal breaks out. His director, his wife, his in-laws all discover the misappropriation. So as to save himself from reproaches and to gain time also, since on the morrow he was to go on a cruise on the "Nautilus", he simulates aparalytic stroke. Alas, he did not get up soon enough, the money he had carefully put into a brief-case was missing....