On August 24, 1944, the day Paris was liberated, Maurice saw his cell door open. Although he had spent the whole war "in the shadows", it was not for acts of resistance, but for stealing a bicycle. His contact with the free world was quite brutal. The queues he observed at the butcher's gave him an idea. With the help of his childhood friend Roland, who has lost everything gambling-wise, he steals "Berlingot", the horse from a delivery car, and offers it for sale on the black market. But the "nag" is not of the same opinion.
Out of love for his adoptive mother, Carl Brenner allows himself to be accused and imprisoned because of an illegal operation carried out by Doctor Stefan Brenner, the legitimate son of Mrs. Brenner. A few years later, Stefan died of alcoholism and Carl made a name for himself under his name.
Completely ruined, André is left with nothing more than the clothes on his back. He is hired as a controller in a small theater and there meets his wife, from whom he is in the process of divorcing. She tells him that he has just recieved an inheritance and that she still loves him.