Sitting on a café terrace, a man writes his memoirs: he tells how his destiny was definitively sealed when, at the age of twelve, because he had stolen from the cash drawer of the family grocery shop to buy marbles, he was deprived of dinner. That evening, his entire family was poisoned by a mushroom dish. Alone in life and having seen the futility of being honest, he has only one ambition, to become rich. Seeing his survival as a sign of destiny, he chooses to achieve his goals by becoming a professional cheat and thief.
