The leader of a band of mountain bandits defending Naples against the French plays a dual role as a police official. Our romantic hero pivots as well between two women, the sister of a royalist and a lady spy.

Cainá is a young peasant who lives in a small village in Sardinia together with her goats and parents. She is a wild and free spirit and unconventional for any small and closed communities dominated by old rules. Cainà yearns to escape from such a closed atmosphere and the isolated island, so, as an old tune says: "Somewhere beyond the sea, somewhere, waiting for me…"; When a boat arrives to the island, she will do her best to flee away from her little oppressing village and experience new adventures in the continent with the help of the boat captain.

The Turin noblewoman Maria Clotilde di Bard, the sole and elderly heir to an ancient Savoyard title, is reduced to living in the attics of the palace due to the embezzlement of a dishonest administrator. The young lady, who has always been alone due to a great love that never led to marriage with Baron Nigra, befriends the daughter of the palace owner, who tells her about her love for an aeronautical engineer: an unhappy love, because her father is against it. Maria Clotilde discovers that the young man is her brother's illegitimate son, taken away at an early age and never recognized, and therefore the sole heir to the Bard name. The shady administrator also ruins the new owners, who find themselves penniless. But in a trunk kept by the damsel there is years of correspondence between her and Baron Nigra, whose immense historical value restores the Bard family to its former glory and thus allows for a happy ending with the marriage of the two young people.

The young lady-in-waiting of a millionairess is kidnapped, in her stead, by people who had an interest in the disappearance of the rich heiress. The girl is entrusted to a shady figure who has, for years, organized a special "hotel" where - in rigorous segregation - he holds prisoners the people entrusted to him by those who, for reasons of interest, have decreed their disappearance.

Daniele, a stockbroker, learns that he has lost a large sum entrusted to him by his friend Giovanni Bensi and he does not have the nerve to tell it in person, so he writes a letter to his friend, telling him that he may collect his life insurance, as he is going to commit suicide - but he can not tell, because he will find a way to make it appear as a misfortune. The insurance policy is valid until midnight, but does not cover suicide.

The great Italian opera composer recalls his eventful life on his deathbed: his childhood in Busseto, his studies in Milan, his first opera "Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio", the death of his wife and his children killed by smallpox.