A bailiff's study engages a young man, Bartleby, pale, stiff, not speaking and expressing no emotion. One fine day Bartleby refuses certain tasks, then all work.

A bailiff runs a small office in central Paris. He supplemented the small staff by recruiting a new employee, Bartleby. This one proves its worth, then begins to refuse certain tasks. Then he lets himself die of hunger to mark his opposition to the world. This resistance generates more and more serious disturbances around him. Troubled, unable to fire him, the bailiff leaves the team and the study to wither away.