Marcel is the illegitimate son of the famous actor Georges de Saint-Rémy, a celebrated virtuoso on the stage, and a notorious rake with a penchant for sleeping with other men’s wives. Owing to his father’s seedy reputation and his own meek, socially awkward mannerisms, Marcel is bullied relentlessly by the other boys at his Parisian school, who seem determined to make his life miserable.
At the beginning of autumn in 1896, Marcel’s brigand of a father becomes embroiled in a particularly salacious scandal, which is widely circulated in tabloids across Paris and beyond.
Fearful for her son’s welfare, and desperate for him to have a respite from their family’s continued drama, Marcel’s long-suffering mother pulls Marcel from his school, and instead chooses to send him to her older sister’s school in Myennes, deep in the French countryside. There is a catch in this seemingly innocuous plan, however. Marcel’s formidable aunt, Albertine, owns an all-girls’ establishmen...
