Stanislas Graff, a powerful industrialist, is kidnapped one morning from in front of his building by a commando of gangsters. So begins a nightmare that will last several weeks. Humiliated, abused, treated inhumanely, he resists, allowing his kidnappers no hold over him. He accepts everything without rebelling or any kind of cry or complaint; he responds with dignity to barbarity. Cut off from the world, receiving only snippets of news from his jailers, Graff can't understand why no one will pay the ransom that would free him. Outside, his world slowly collapses when his true nature is revealed. Everything that he'd managed to keep private, his secret garden, is revealed to his family by the police investigation or press coverage. Everyone discovers a man who is far from being the one that they imagined.