The atmosphere in the living-room of Bébé's parents living-room is peaceful. Bébé is reading a children's book and his father the newspaper while Madam is playing the piano. Peaceful at least until the maid comes in and gives Bébé's mother a document that makes her wince. Her husband takes notice of the paper and realizes it is an invoice from a clothes shop, whose amount gives him vertigo. Beside himself one more time, he starts one of those quarrels Bébé is fed up with. When his exasperated mother decides to leave home, Bébé has no other solution but to kill himself, or rather to simulate suicide, in order to reunite his parents.