Objectively, Odette Toulemonde has nothing to be happy about, but is. Balthazar Balsan has everything to be happy about, but isn’t. Odette, awkwardly forty, with a delightful hairdresser son and a daughter bogged down in adolescence, spends her days behind the cosmetic’s counter in a department store and her nights sewing feathers on costumes for Parisian variety shows. She dreams of thanking Balthazar Balsan, her favorite author, to whom – she believes – she owes her optimism. The rich and charming Parisian writer then turns up in her life in an unexpected way.

French philosopher Denis Diderot produces the first encyclopedia while indulging in 18th-century decadence.

A piano teacher suspects her entourage of being responsible for the disappearance of a former pupil she was putting up. She starts to grow suspicious of everyone's behavior.

A Protestant businessman, Jean Calas, is tortured to death for allegedly killing his son to stop him becoming a Catholic. Voltaire launches a Europe-wide campaign to win rehabilitation for Calas and compensation for his family.

Pierre Vasseur is the French president. He has a busy schedule: resolving political crises, abating popular anger, tolerating sarcastic journalists, and parrying opposition attacks-not to mention dealing with the tense relationship he has with his daughter.

Nicole invites her husband's two brothers and their wives for their housewarming party. Except that she also asked the assistant of one of them, the mysterious Talia, to come. This does not seem to please the other guests.