A novel set in the Auvergne, where a clever doctor and a shrewd landowner, Oriol, plan to turn a newly found mineral spring into a fashionable spa. As the resort grows, wealthy visitors, financiers and doctors arrive, and a love story develops among them, involving a young heiress and a charming Parisian aristocrat. Maupassant mixes a satire of business and medical fashion with a study of desire, marriage and motherhood. It is a lively picture of commercial ambition in nineteenth-century France.