Alfredo Bertone
A married society woman strikes up a romance with a young musician. She introduces the man to high society. The society woman eventually decides to break off the relationship and the musician attempts to blackmail her.
In Renaissance Florence, a Florentine trader meets a shipwrecked stranger, who introduces himself as Tito Melema, a young Italianate-Greek scholar. Tito becomes acquainted with several other Florentines, including Nello the barber and a young girl named Tessa. He is also introduced to a blind scholar named Bardo de' Bardi, and his daughter Romola. As Tito becomes settled in Florence, assisting Bardo with classical studies, he falls in love with Romola.
Angela Chiaromonte is the daughter of a wealthy Italian prince who is killed in a fall from his horse. Though Angela stands to inherit half of a large estate, her older half-sister burns the will and thus inherits everything herself, throwing Angela into poverty. Fortunately, Angela is engaged to marry dashing Captain Giovanni Severi - but he soon is captured by Arabs while on an expedition to Africa. Believing him dead, Angela, dedicating her life to his memory, becomes a nun, unaware that her lover has escaped his captors and is returning to Italy. The dramatic climax takes place against a backdrop of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Saturnin Farandoul birth was marked by adventure: saved by the waters, raised by monkeys, taken in by sailors, becoming captain of a frigate, he sets off to explore the five or six known and unknown worlds with his loyal crew. Beneath the sea he encounters love in the person of the beautiful Mysora; on land he comes up against a mad wise man, a Machiavellian mandarin and bloodthirsty Apaches but nothing will be able to stop his desire to travel.
