It is just one year after her marriage to Floriet that Jacqueline feels the first pangs of regret. They are really happy with their son Raymond, but she wants the attention, love and caresses which Floriet is unable to give because of the time and attention he gives his law books, for her sake. Craving the love her husband is too busy to supply, she clandestinely meets Eugene, a former lover, and Floriet sees everything. Disregarding her pleas, Floriet sends her away. A very short time later Eugene meets with an accident and poor Jacqueline is left alone. She returns to Floriet's house to see little Raymond and again Floriet drives her away. Unable to secure work, and desperate for want of food, she accompanies Manuel Garcia, a disreputable Cuban, to Havana. Sweethearts are plentiful and Garcia soon tires of Jacqueline. In the depths of degradation, she is about to end it all, when she meets Laroque, a runner for Perrisard and Merrival, shyster lawyers in Bordeaux. With him she returns to France. In Bordeaux, in the Hotel of the Three Crowns, she tells him her past, omitting to give her husband's name. When the lawyers come to the hotel to transact business with their employee, he tells them of Jacqueline, of her former social position in Paris, and most important of the dowry which her husband failed to return to her. Laroque's preparations to go to Paris to search for her husband crazes her with the thought that her son will know of her degradation and she kills him. Raymond Floriet, her son, now an advocate, is appointed to defend Jacqueline, who, because of her refusal to divulge her identity, is known to the police as Madame X. Before his father as Judge, Raymond defends Madame X, his own mother. Thanks to the eloquent pleading of her son, Jacqueline is acquitted. Then in a tragic scene old Floriet holds out his arms, a light of forgiveness in his eyes, but too late for her to see. She no longer sees, nor hears, nor will she, "here below."