This play has presented the main character as Mr. Durand who is a former railroad employee, widower and pensioner. Here in this play, he has been presented as a financially ruined person. Mr. Durand is spending his life living along with his three daughters. His three daughters are: Adele (27), Annette (24) and Therese (24 years)

The relationship between father and three daughters is not good. They are completely bankrupt. They have been facing a financial crisis for the last ten years. They have turned their home into a lodge for the rest of their lives. Adele works in the kitchen and Mr. Durand engages himself in other kinds of works such as serving guests, cleaning, delivering and bringing food items etc.

In the lodge, Mr. Durand’s two daughters only try to seek others’ attention. They don’t help in other tasks in the lodge except playing, singing and flirting with the customers.

The entire Durand family has been living and spending their lives borrowing money from others for years. The family is dealing with financial hardships. With bills piling up, Durand is trying to figure out how to provide for his three daughters after their mother’s death.

Mr. Durand has to pay several bills. He has to pay everyone like the baker, the butcher and the grocer. Their work boy, Pierre, comes up empty-handed when he goes for bread. Rather he brings only unpaid bills. Durand buys candles to light on the death anniversary of his late (Zaria) son, René, who died in infancy. He still loves him and misses him.

At their lodge, he has the only paying guest who is Antonio (an Italian army lieutenant). Durand tells Antonio that due to bankruptcy and lack of supplies, they can no longer house him. Antonio offers to pay in advance and lets him stay for another month but Durand refuses. He also says that last spring he had no guests for three months and finally an American family came and helped him. When Durand goes for a coffee-bread, Therese flirts with guest Antonio and they kiss.

Durand is quite surprised to see them kissing when he appears at the door. Enraged, he angrily drives Antonio away from his house. He also throws away the money given by him. Therese and Annette are unhappy to see their father’s act. They want the guest (Antonio) to be there. Both girls misbehave with their father. They even snatch the glass of milk from him as he could not bring bread. In compulsion, they make him drink only a glass of water. As he prepares to light his bribery pipe, Therese snatches the match.

Mr. Durand is hungry for a long time and eats rats’ feed too. But he luckily survives because it isn’t poisonous. All his three daughters accuse him of spoiling the condition of the house. They claim that if mother had been alive, the condition of the house would not have deteriorated. When their mother was alive, she did not have a good relationship with their father Durand. The daughters seem to take the mother’s side and only blame the father. Actually, their mother used to waste money in the lottery. Most of the time she was scolded. She was threatened that she would work as a prostitute.

When the wind blows, Mr. Durand tells his daughters to put out the stove fire and take care of the insurance documents properly. He also says that he is going to bring money from insurance for them. Now the daughters start behaving well with him. Seeing Therese’s unhappiness, he allows her to marry Lieutenant Antonio if he truly loves her. Hearing this, Therese is now overjoyed and returns the match to him.

He calls his eldest daughter Adele and asks if there are candles. He tells Adele to hide documents from a fire insurance policy and begins to reveal the secrets he has kept inside his heart. He was born in France. He had fallen in love with a woman even before the age of recruitment. In order to be able to marry, they came to Switzerland and obtained native citizenship. During the final war, he joined the Swiss Army and fought against the French army. It means that he took up arms against his own country. To hide that shame, he lies that he was born in Switzerland.

He also states that due to his mother’s carelessness and foolish speculations, he lost the ancestral property and the maternal property. In this way, they ran out of their inheritance.

While his wife was alive, she taught the children to hate their father Durand. She made them obey herself. Most of the time, she blamed her husband and became successful to make the children against their father. After her death, Mr. Durand remained silent all his life because he did not want his daughters to doubt their mother’s goodness.

Mr. Durand suggests Adele take maternal care of her sisters. He suggests finding a teacher’s place for youngest daughter Annette so that she can be in good company and keep insurance documents properly. In the end, he drinks the poison from the glass and the house is seen burning. Thus Durand sets the house on fire and poisoned himself so that his daughters could receive 5000 francs as compensation from the fire insurance.