This is the story of a simple-minded man who believes in people with all the purity and naïveté of one who lives in a world apart, removed from reality. His name is Pharaon de Winter - the same as a painter born in Bailleul, in northern France, in 1849. He is a police lieutenant and also lives in Bailleul, with his mother.

     In his modest, quiet existence however, he is in for a tragic change with the occurrence of a hedious crime: a girl is raped and cruelly assassinated. Pharaon suffers more than everyone else in the town, unable to comprehend humanity around him.

     Quite alone, he shares his grief with his neighbor Domino, a 23-year-old laborer who dates Joseph, the driver of the school bus. This love slowly consumes him, just as does the investigation of the crime that reveals his despair and fear of his own guilt - universal guilt, that of our monstrous nature. Thus is humanity.