Jacques Forestier, the central character of Cocteau's famous first novel from 1921, is a parasite and dilettante who responds readily to beauty in both sexes. Leaving his provincial family he comes to Paris to study for his degree. Indulging in a life of dissipation with a group of students and their mistresses, he falls in love with Germaine, a chorus girl kept by a rich banker. The affair, doomed from the start, forces Jacques to come to terms not so much with society as he finds it but with himself.