Part 1 of Denuzière's chronicle of a family of planters, the Damvilliers, that spans the period between 1830 and the 1940s. The first part of the saga is dominated by Virginie, a beautiful and ambitious woman, whose fate will be linked with that of Bagatelle, a cotton plantation on the banks of the Mississippi. Immigrants, slaves, aristocrats of French origin, dozens of characters bring to life the diversity of their daily lives, their passions, their ambitions, and the peak and decline of the South.