Le lieutenant de Kouta
 Lieutenant Siriman Keita has returned from a long service in the French Colonial Army (during which he was awarded the Croix de guerre) to Kouta, a market village near his smaller home village of Kouroula. In Kouta, he at first plots to ascend to the canton chiefdom while avoiding his envious older brother, Faganda. However, his plans are scrapped when he humiliates himself in a horse-riding accident before the village, and he withdraws to his fortress-like "square house." After a time, he adopts a fatherless boy who he had once punished for stealing, and marries Awa, a Senegalese woman of questionable reputation. Disaster strikes the lieutenant again, however, when the French commandant incites him to lead a punitive expedition against the pro-independence village of Woudi. When the expedition fails, the lieutenant is stripped and humiliated before the people of Kouta and, after the commandant denies his own involvement, is sent to jail in the country's capital for disturbing the peace. He returns to find Awa pregnant by a young pro-independence activist, but having changed during his incarceration, the lieutenant forgives her betrayal and adopts the coming child as his own. He reconciles with the imam of the local mosque, formerly a bitter enemy, and eventually becomes the village muezzin, only to die mysteriously following an injection by his envious brother. The imam does him the honor of burying him in the mosque, while the French administrators, concerned by the example of his conversion, hastily and posthumously award him the Legion of Honour.