On the 17th of March 1951, an unremarkable drama played out in Paris, the kind of drama that happens every year in every part of the world. A young 24-year-old girl, Pauline Dubuisson, came to see her former lover. Why visit exes? Probably to work things out. The guy was shot and the girl, first tried to shoot herself, then opened the gas. That's when the police arrived.

Félix Bayi, Dubuisson's former lover, was frankly not happy about the meeting. In fact, he hadn't even scheduled it. To be precise, Dubuisson had tracked him down. Bought a revolver, found an address, wrote a will. This will came to the attention of the girl's mother, who was aware of the relationship between the young people, sent a telegram to Felix. Nobody dared to inform the police. A couple of days Felix stayed with friends, but then decided that the danger had passed.

The reason for the quarrel is simple and old as the world. The young people had known each other for two years, came together, quarreled, came together again. Once Felix first abandoned Pauline, the same feelings for him did not leave. She found out that he lives in Paris, came to him, spent the night with him, and he said that he took revenge on her - say, at the beginning of the relationship twice called you to wife, and you with a cold nose. So, in fact, the girl got a revolver.

French society, which was at that time in the heyday of its economy, was hungry for such details. Two camps instantly emerged in the country - some considered Dubuisson a skillful manipulator who had sent a promising doctor to the grave for nothing, and others - an unhappy and deceived girl who had been taken advantage of. Even the suicide attempt made by the girl in her cell while waiting for the verdict did not have a proper effect on the judges. The verdict was unambiguous - a life sentence. The prosecutor asked for execution, but it was refused.

Strange as it may seem, there was only one person among the journalists who had studied Dubuisson's biography a little more thoroughly than is required for writing yellow articles. It turned out that Pauline's youth was during the occupation - in the city of Dunkirk, the very same, from the vicinity of which in 1940 the British fled.

The liberation of the city, in 1944, the long-awaited relief did not bring. The fact is that in the liberated territories in great numbers began to appear in the so-called ‘liberation committees’, which were engaged in deciding who should repent for the humiliation inflicted on France during the war.

Girls suspected of having relations with the Germans were shaved bald, insulted and humiliated. Among others, Pauline, who was only 17 years old at the time, was humiliated. The insults and humiliation were not enough; they wanted to try her by a ‘people's tribunal’, but at the last moment, on the eve of the trial, her father stole her away and they managed to leave.

The rest of the story is already known to the reader - her studies in Lille, her meeting with Félix Bayi, her separation, his murder, her trial. But in 1959, for good behavior, Pauline was released. She tried to dissociate herself from her past - took her father's surname, again engaged in studies. But in 1960, received a blow from where she did not expect. The screens came out the cult film by Henri Georges Clouzot ‘The Truth’, in which the heroine, very similar to Pauline Dubuisson, played herself Brigitte Bardot. The next day Pauline seemed to poke her in the back on the street.

 Pauline left her hometown, tried, once again, to start life from the beginning, but the past was faster than her. In the summer of 1963, she committed suicide.