The year is 1798. For childish reasons, the last king of France has outlawed hot air balloons, sentencing the middle-aged Claude-Philippe Framboise, once a celebrated master balloonist extraordinaire, to a life of poverty. As an outbreak of syphilis incinerates his sanity, Framboise's true nature is revealed, and in the cellar of his landlady's house, he concocts a monstrous scheme usurping all other schemes observable from the armchair of history in its propensity for senseless brutality. As his demented brain constipates into porridge, the shrewd Framboise labors to build a maniacal craft made of the people he's tricked and murdered. Before long, Framboise has built a hot air balloon out of the bones and skin of his victims. Those with the misfortune of remaining alive are tied from their ankles and dangled from the basket as their misanthropic conductor stares into the sun, arms outstretched toward the sea. Framboise has flown away, up and over the Basse and into a cloud, toward Calais, for what purpose we can never know.