Simone intervenes when rivalry between soldiers and local men gets too heated, preventing a fight and separating them with a song.
The musketeers have been billeted in the town by order of the Governor of Touraine, Comte de Pontcourlay, to watch out for conspiracies against the throne.
Gontran de Solanges has fallen in love with the niece of the governor, and his fellow officer Brissac has sent for his friend’s old tutor, the Abbé Bridaine, to cure him of this.
The object of Gontran’s love, Marie, is a pupil, along with her sister Louise, at the Convent des Ursulines in Vouvray where the nuns guard their charges with great care.
Gontran is in despair, but Brissac persuades him to join in an escapade: they steal into a room where two itinerant monks are sleeping, and take their clothes.
The Mother Superior enters and tells that, at the request of the governor, they will receive a visit from two important priests who will take confession from them.
He is met by Louise who has begun to have suspicions about the two ‘priests’, Bridaine sends her off and tells Marie that his pupil Gontran has fallen in love with her but that she must write to him saying that she has no feelings for him.
While the nuns discuss the preparations for the Cardinal's visit the following day, Gontran and Marie meet, vow their love, but are joined by Brissac and Louise, who has insisted on leaving with them as the price of her silence.