The setting is a shabby estate presided over by Milou (Michel Piccoli), a genial man in his sixties who lives the life of a lazy country sensualist: he keeps bees, browns in the sun, and gropes the housekeeper.
We hear the words near the start of the movie, yet the chosen man Cardinal Melville (Michel Piccoli), a compromise candidate, advanced in years does not appear on the balcony.
Yet the drama is framed with great elegance, and, in the pathos of Piccoli an old man as harried as a child we feel how weighty and stifling the robes of state must be.