When an older man living in Paris retires from his job working at a bank, his younger husband James, who travels abroad frequently for work and is not often home, gets him a small terrier named Cordelia. The man is at first skeptical of the dog, worried she will use the bathroom inside and bark all day, but the dog is well behaved, and he soon becomes attached to her. The man often reflects on his life. He thinks about James, young and strong and never home, and compares him to himself, growing old and frail. Neither of his two sons like James, but his ex-wife Simone accepts their marriage and still visits sometimes for lunch. James loves parties, and when socializing, he is charming and warm, but he does not act this way towards his husband when the guests go home. Instead he goes to sleep, leaving his clothes on the floor for their maid Desi to pick up. The man remembers his first love who he new as a child. When he meets him as a young man again years later at a night club, he learns that he had been arrested by the Germans at the end of the war. In prison he was abandoned and given no food, and he now had tuberculosis. The young man invites him over to his house when his parents are not home, and they have dinner together. However, he soon begins coughing up blood and does not stop until collapsing to the floor. The boy calls a doctor and his brother. The doctor takes the boy away and tells him never to speak of the incident, and his brother stays and helps him clean up the blood. It was shortly after this incident that he met Simone and got married. As the dog Cordelia grows older, she occasionally pees on the floor inside. One night, when the man takes her to use the bathroom outside, she falls over and stops breathing. The man does chest compressions even after he is sure she has died, but Cordelia miraculously wakes up and the man takes her inside. The next day, the man and his husband take the dog to the vet. James implies that it may be time to put the dog down, but the vet does not recommend this. Instead, the vet calls Cordelia Madame Lazarus and the man takes her home. Then, one morning a few months later, the man notices that Cordelia looks very sick and can hardly move. James is out of town, so this time the man and Desi, the maid, go to the vet together. The man realizes that they will have to put Cordelia down and begs Desi to come with him, but she refuses and remains in the waiting room. After Cordelia is put down, the man returns to Desi and, afraid that she will soon find another job, begs her not to leave him.