Robert Bernier murdered his brother with the complicity of a worker. The only witness to the tragedy, Veronique was injured while rescuing her boss and remains blind. Later, cured by an operation, she denounces the criminal whose voice she recognized and who had taken over the factory.
A brave woman is sentenced to prison on false testimony. She escapes twenty years later and takes refuge in Paris where she carries bread while looking for her children Georges and Lucie who will find her and exonerate her.
The film starts with a woman on the run from her millionaire husband giving birth to a daughter in the home of a washerwoman. The woman dies in childbirth, but the baby survives. The washerwoman leaves the baby in a horsedrawn Parisian taxicab (No. 13). The paperwork of the birth is lost in a huge tome. Sixteen years pass. The tome is bought by a poor student. One day his bookshelf collapses, and the tome opens at the page where the paperwork has been hidden. The student realises that the paperwork relates to a millionaire who has spent the last sixteen years looking for his pregnant wife. The student traces the washerwoman, and he tricks her into confessing what she has done with the baby. Meanwhile, the baby has been adopted by the cab driver and his wife, and has grown into Lili Damita.
