An old bachelor recounts the story of his life, his alley, and its residents, where craftsmen and workers live alongside petty-bourgeois, impoverished intellectuals. In Sperlingsgasse, particularly in the houses numbered 7, 11, and 12, a multitude of events unfold, in which the first-person narrator Johannes Wacholder is empathetically and actively involved. There is the count's seducer, whose victim drowns herself. The son from this union, Franz Ralff, grows up alongside the rector's daughter Marie Volkmann and Johannes. These three individuals share a lifelong friendship, even though Franz, having become a painter, marries Marie, whom Johannes also loves. When Elise, the child of Franz and Marie, loses her parents early on, Johannes takes care of her. Their playmate Gustav Berg reveals himself to be her cousin, as his mother is a daughter of...