Wandering into a Paris tobacco shop for a pack of Gauloises Bleues cigarettes, 30-year-old Ivan meets Jeanne, a young salesgirl as lonely and impoverished as himself. After a brief courtship, Jeanne leaves her job to marry Ivan. Plagued by financial difficulties, however, the union soon becomes an unhappy one, and Ivan buys a rope in case he should want to hang himself. After committing an unspecified crime for which he is sentenced to death, Ivan is released because there is no room for him in the crowded prisons. Driven to despair, the couple decide to divorce, but Jeanne becomes pregnant. When he takes his wife to a maternity clinic, Ivan sits in the waiting room and recalls his unhappy childhood. Arrested for stealing at the age of 6, Ivan is placed in a state institution. Although his ailing mother pleads with a judge for her son's release, her request is denied because she has a criminal record . Ivan's reverie is interrupted by a nurse who informs him that his child has been born dead.