With St Petersburg awash with extravagant, dissolute bureaucrats concerned only with increasing their vast riches, a secret movement infiltrates one of their members into one such household. Once there, the man sees for himself the profligacy he has sworn to oppose - yet he also sees purposelessness throughout life. Determining to follow his own values, he embarks upon a new path, little knowing that this too will lead him to tragedy - and a tragedy that he will find impossible to bear.