Scientist Edmund Hall searches for the very element of life, while his wife Madame D'Ora struggles with the jealousy of Hall's fascination with young women and spiritualism. The two main characters are in themselves parodies: Edmund Hall is a scientist and as in the myth of Faust in the process of finding the very element of life, that is, as Hall himself puts it: what Substance is and how it can be converted into Power. And Madame D'ora is a bankrupt variety singer, and already too old to take on the role of seductive viv.