In 18th-century Paris, Jerome Coignard, an abbé who enters a Parisian soup kitchen called the Queen of Goosefoot, takes on the owner's son, James the Impaler, as his apprentice in exchange for a good salary. The abbé, a doctor of theology and a master of the arts, is a man of great learning, adventurous and fond of physical pleasures, who humorously highlights the contradictions between common sense and Catholic beliefs. In the house of D'Astarac, a wealthy alchemist philosopher, he employs the abbot and his disciple to translate ancient Greek texts.