Since completing a portrait of Genuine, a high priestess, Percy becomes irritable and withdrawn. He loses interest in painting and refuses to see his friends, preferring to spend his time alone with the portrait in his study. After turning down a wealthy patron's offer to buy the picture, Percy falls asleep while reading stories of Genuine's life. Genuine comes to life from the painting and escapes.

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 the Ruritanian kingdom of Leuchtenstein, the old ruler has just died. His subjects are a bunch of intrigants, and his only real friend was the Baroness Windegg (Olga Tschechowa), a kind-hearted, witty, and very attractive woman, who however was not much loved by the Leuchtenstein upper class. And as these are only interested in getting better positions and other wealths after His Excellency's death, the baroness invents the story that the old ruler wrote his memoirs before his death, containing a lot of intimate, delicate and potentially embarrassing details about the Leuchtenstein dignitaries. Unsurprisingly, everyone is afraid about the details to be revealed. Only the successor to the throne, Prince Ernst Albrecht (Willy Fritsch) sees through the baroness' scheme, and as he is a lusty young man, he joins in her prank.

The operetta composer Robert Ottmar is fascinated when he discovers a picture of a young lady in a newspaper. The beauty's mere countenance inspires him to write a new operetta, which is very successful. Ottmar learns that his beloved is called Gloria and is the daughter of a general manager from Nice. In order to find out whether Gloria corresponds to his ideal image in reality, he hires himself out as a valet in her father's villa - incognito, of course.

In Annemarie Brinkmann's small German village all the young men are recruited to the front in WWI. When her boyfriend Klaus Renken gets the call they spend their last romantic night together. Time goes by but one day when the pastor announces the names of the fallen villagers: Klaus is among them. Annemarie collapses while the congregation sings a funeral song.