L'harmonie d'un foyer de bourgeois modestes est compromise par un héritage. La fillette délaissée par sa mère devenue mondaine détruit les invitations pour un bal que ses parents donnent pour se lancer dans le monde. Personne ne vient au bal, mais l'avenir va conserver toute la saveur du passé.

Two middle-class notions dealers live happily with their girl, but an inheritance turns these nice people into snob Nouveaux Riches. Although the aristocracy invites them, the 'Tout-Paris' laughs behind their back. When they invite their would be new friends for a ball in their desirable new mansion, their daughter, sick and tired of being abandoned by her once loving parents, throws the invitations into the Seine.