In spite of his failures as a peddler, Casimir guarantees his fiancée that this time his vacuum cleaners will work for good. But he's still unsuccessful until he goes to the apartment of Paul-André, a painter who was engaged by correspondence to a rich South American woman. That's exactly when she arrives armed with a gun, infuriated after receiving a break-up letter from the man she had never met. She mistakenly takes Casimir as her painter lover, and he's ready to flee until he learns she owns many hotels - a thousand rooms in fact. "A thousand rooms, a thousand vacuum cleaners", he suddenly thinks.