Henry is an ex-pat in Paris, cadging drinks and meals and places to sleep, giving advice about women to clueless men, flirting with the wives of acquaintances, burning bridges, and making philosophical observations. In vignettes we see his wife Mona come to Paris and leave immediately when she tastes Henry's vagabond life; he tries teaching English at a school in Dijon, takes the son of a wealthy Indian to a bordello, gets a job as a proofreader at the Herald Tribune, and helps out a pal who's in and out of an asylum and deeply in love with a whore. Can Henry make his own discovery of ecstasy?