On a cold November Sunday in 1895, a new pupil named Augustin Meaulnes arrives at the schoolhouse in Sainte-Agathe where fifteen-year-old François Seurel lives with his parents. François's mother, Millie, is busy in her room trying on a newly delivered winter hat, while François lingers outside after attending vespers and watching the local fire brigade practice. Upon returning home, François finds a distressed elderly woman peering through the dining room window and anxiously asking for her son, who has wandered off. The woman, a wealthy widow from La Ferté-d’Angillon, explains that she has brought her older son, Augustin, to board at the school to attend the advanced classes following the tragic drowning of her younger son. As they talk, heavy footsteps echo through the abandoned upstairs granaries. Soon after, seventeen-year-old Augustin descends the stairs and steps into the dimly lit dining room wearing a peasant's felt hat and a belted black schoolboy blouse. Augustin immediately asks François to join him in the courtyard, where he produces a blackened wooden wheel from the July 14 fireworks that he found in the attic. Without hesitation, he plants the wheel in the sand, lights two unspent rockets with smuggled matches, and grabs François's hand to pull him back from the sudden burst of red and white stars. Millie and Meaulnes's mother watch the display from the doorway in silent astonishment before finalizing the board arrangements, and Augustin shares his first quiet family dinner with his head bowed and the others staring at him in wonder.