Julie and Désirée Clary are courted by the brothers Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte. Joseph marries Julie and Napoleon is affianced to Désirée. When Napoleon breaks the engagement and marries Joséphine de Beauharnais, Désirée becomes involved with General Bernadotte.
Monsieur Durand-Bidon's mother-in-law is decidedly cantankerous. She never ceases - she who is a duchess - to reproach the latter for his low origins. One morning, at dawn, while he comes home "well watered", he is surprised with a comrade at the bottom of a bathtub. Taken for a homosexual,...
Comte de Larzac, an aging seducer, leaves Paris for Lannemezan. Accompanied by his friend Charmeuil, he goes there to acknowledge the paternity of Jean, a twenty-year old young man who knows nothing about his biological father. Jean, after falling for Jeanne, the daughter of a farmer, now courts...
The life of composer Frédéric Chopin through his youthful love for Maria Wodzińska, a young Polish aristocrat he was unable to marry because of his own situation, considered too modest by the girl's family. On the threshold of death, Chopin remembered his beloved and the piece he composed when...
