Her mother, Immaculate, however, hovers in the wings like a vulture, hoping he will die, because she aspires to marry Giovanna off to a lawyer friend of the family, as a better social and economic proposition.

He is an orphan, a lively lad growing up in village in the Latin Valley, under the tutelage of a maiden aunt who is filled with religious scruples, though given to libertine assignations, with which she indoctrinates him.

When the day of his first communion nears, for which he prepares with accentuated religious devotion, he, with the other communicants, is given an effigy of "celestial friends," saints who are expected to assist them until they embrace Jesus.

This prohibition leads to him refraining from telling all of his 'sins' in confession to Father Quirino, and, ashamed by a sense that he has committed a sacrilege, during the first communion he feels that the host has stuck in his throat, and in a panic at incipient suffocation, runs away, only to slip from a wall and fall into a ravine Despite local fears that he has come to a sorry end, he emerges unharmed, and the people proclaim that he has been the beneficiary of a miracle.

But Benedict, blocked by his scruples, unable to take advantage of easy opportunities that come his way as well as meeting and chatting with a beautiful village girl who had come to him at night to buy panties French and willing to pay in kind .

Orestes has never married the mother of Joan, Immaculate, a woman on the contrary very observant if not bigoted, that continues to threaten want to report the alleged sexual abuse that gave rise to daughter.

Giovanna, as Benedict is a virgin, is rather close to the ideas of his father, and leads the young man to overcome his resistance and finally get rid of her sexual inhibitions.

Benedict arrives in time to witness the scene and shocked by the alleged conversion of his beloved "father" runs away and tries to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff over the sea.