One summer night in an idyllic village in the south of France, the pretty young wife of the baker runs off with a handsome young shepherd. Finding her gone in the morning, the baker is devastated. He pretends she has had to go suddenly to her mother, but people are not fooled and their efforts at consoling him misfire. Going into Sunday Mass in the Catholic Church, he is deeply upset at what seems an unfeeling sermon from the inexperienced young priest and heads for the café, where he gets publicly drunk on pastis.