As a child in Alsace, Stéphane Breitwieser explores ruins with his maternal grandfather, unearthing tiles and artifacts he treats as personal discoveries. These finds, placed in a treasured blue box, become emotional anchors and set a pattern of intimate, possessive attachment to objects.

Raised among antiques and paintings, including ties to the painter Robert Breitwieser, Stéphane feels out of step with his era. He retreats into archaeology and art history, shuns peers, and battles anxiety and depression. Museum visits soothe him; tactile encounters with “witness marks” deepen his veneration for handmade works.

A chance snag at Strasbourg—a lead fragment from a Roman coffin—becomes his first rationalized museum taking. Family life collapses as his parents’ marriage implodes; his father leaves with all valuables, intensifying Stéphane’s sense of loss and sharpening his attachment to objects. He and his mother downsize, she remains permissive, and he begins shoplifting widely.

Confrontations with police escalate to an arrest and a brief court‑ordered clinic stay. He tries Zoloft, abandons it, and takes a job as a guard at the Mulhouse History Museum. There he studies visitor flow and display vulnerabilities, quits after a month, and steals a pristine Merovingian belt buckle, carefully disguising the loss.

The blue box now holds relics that never betray him, reinforcing his belief that objects are more reliable than people. With a growing credo of art “liberation” and a rejection of ordinary work and rules, his path narrows—until he falls in love with a girl, a change that will redirect his future.