Arch of Triumph develops two major characters, Ravic and Joan. Ravic, a skilled surgeon whose real name is Ludwig Fresenberg, served in World War I where he met Sergeant Katczinsky, hid two of his friends from the Gestapo, was caught and brutally interrogated by Haake, and then sent to a concentration camp from which he escaped to become a Paris refugee, a man without a passport or a country.

Ravic saves Joan Madou from suicide after the death of her lover, and he and Joan fall in love because each needs the other as stabilizing influences in a rapidly changing world. As with the Paris lights and world peace, their love affair is doomed by the ominous approach of war, and the end of their affair begins when Ravic, who aids a seriously injured construction worker, is questioned by the police and then deported because he does not...