In Paris, in the middle of the 19th century, the Comte de Chamery died of poisoning, leaving a considerable fortune to his long-dead son. Sir William, the count's murderer, hires a young rogue, Rocambole, to pretend to be the deceased's son. The two accomplices have the Count's fortune handed over to them. But their trickery is discovered by an intriguer, Baccarat, who finds the real Count of Chamery, a young painter without fortune, in love with Carmen de Montevecchio. Rocambole, who stops at nothing, kills Sir William, gets rid of Armand and makes Carmen love him. But Baccarat is determined not to let him continue his villainies.

At 18, the beautiful and intelligent Kira comes to Petersburg as the Communists consolidate power. She rebuffs a cousin who rises in the Party and may remember the slight. She falls in love with Leo, the son of an aristocrat, who gets into political trouble and never gets out.

A wealthy widow becomes infatuated with an adventurer posing as a poet and, forgetting her responsibilities as a mother and her no longer young age, falls prey to a love frenzy in her family that puts her at odds with her daughter, who has just left boarding school, and her own brother, who is all about scientific research. The girl, who has learned of the alleged poet's less-than-honest intentions, tries every means to drive him away and restore her mother's sentimental balance. For this she pretends to be in love with him who, attracted by her youth and rich dowry, proposes that she elope.

In the 19th century, a thug from the slums of Paris pretends to be a young aristocrat, but is unmasked by a demi-mondaine, from the same background as him.

After having been captured in a Crimea during a failed attempt to flee overseas, Leo returns in Petersburg for Kira.