Piet van Leeuwen is the most perceptive man of the 17th century, but he overlooks the most important thing in his life. Born with dwarfism and abandoned by his mother, he has been gifted with a very special ability as a compensation. His eyes are a wonder. He perceives even the tiniest details that others are blind to with his unique vision. His differences make him an outsider from an early age. The search for the smallest things becomes the central theme of his life. Only with a great deal of luck does he survive his childhood in a boarding school where violence and abuse prevail. After years of hardship in Amsterdam, he opens a cloth trading business in his birthplace, Delft. There, he lives under one roof with his Jewish maid Carla, whom he has bought out of a brothel. No one in the city suspects anything about their history.