The Marquis Guy de Kerdrel returns from his regiment in Africa to claim an inheritance from his late great-uncle, whom he had never met.

That way he will have some compensation for his relative's frequent refusal, in letters signed with a characteristic monogram, to give the spendthrift soldier any money.

Chevrette, the domestic, lets slip in conversation that the old Marquis had written a new will leaving everything to his widow but that Alice, the Marquise, had been so concerned that his last hours should not be troubled that she refused the notary access to get the document signed thus allowing the scapegrace great-nephew to inherit after all.

He catches a momentary glimpse of a beautiful girl, almost as if in a dream, and learns from Chevrette later that this must be the widow, whom Guy had imagined to be an old hag... he falls in love almost without hesitation.

It turns out that Chevrette had salvaged the partly burned document from the fire and jammed it into the frame, naïvely believing that if she prayed hard enough to Saint Gildas, the old man would return from the after-life to sign it.