In a small Italian village live a group of men, each as miscreant as the next. Among them is the baker, violent and miserly. One day, to benefit from an inheritance, he has to distribute fifty kilos of bread a day to the poor for five years. At the moment of distribution, a dog comes along and takes a loaf of bread in its mouth, to take to an old hermit whom the villagers are convinced "has seen God".

Cardinal Mazarin dies, leaving a power vacuum in which the young Louis asserts his intention to govern as well as rule. Mazarin's fiscal advisor, Colbert, warns against Fouquet, the Superintendant who has been systematically looting the treasury and wants to be prime minister. Fouquet believes Louis will soon tire of exercizing power and overplays his hand by offering a bribe to Louis' mistress to be his ally. She reports this to the king who arrests Fouquet. Louis and Colbert design a brilliant strategy to keep merchants making money, nobles in debt, the urban poor working and fed, and peasants untaxed.

From April to July 1794, Robespierre forms a triumvirate with Saint-Just and Couthon. He plans to instate his ideal based on virtue and in times of revolutionary crisis, on terror. In May, he establishes the Cult of the Supreme Being. However, he still has numerous enemies...