Hervé is a tough sea captain in command of the "Duchesse Anne", a rum-trading ship. But the sea dog hides a tender heart and he allows Marie-Douce, a poor slum girl who dreams of seeing the wide world,on board. To have her accepted by the crew, he passes her off as his niece. A seasoned master like him, wise enough to ban alcohol use on his ship, should have known better : a beautiful girl on the deck cannot but unleash the savage instincts of all those men without women.

The film is set shortly after the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, around 1818, in which the hero Lieutanatn Orso fought for the French. In Marseille, returning to Corsica and his family estate, of which is now the head, Orso meets the Irish widower Colonel Sir Thomas Nevil and his beautiful daughter Lydia. The Colonel also fought for the British at Waterloo and they strike up a military-based friendship. They also share a passion for hunting. Orso convinces the colonel to come and hunt there. France ruled Corsica then, as they still do. Sadly, in his absence Orso's father has been assassinated by the influential Barracini family. Orso's sister Colomba is bent on him revenging the murder - in the Sicilian vendetta style. Orso doesn't agree with these old ways and the scene is set for a terrible conflict involving Corsican bandits and the French prefect. The book was made into an Italian one with the same title in 1948 and remade in 1950 in Hollywood under the name of "Vendetta".

An American star, visiting Paris, falls asleep in the Louvre while a guide comments on Watteau's "Voyage à Cythère". She dreams that the painting's characters, beautiful ladies, escape, scattering across Paris after a tour of the fashion houses.

Political intrigue and psychological drama run parallel. The queen is in seclusion, veiling her face for the ten years since her husband's assassination, longing to join him in death. Stanislas, a poet whose pen name is Azrael, is a suicidal anarchist, his imagination haunted into hate by longing for this queen who's drawn apart. He enters her private quarters intent on killing her then himself, but they fall in love, in part because he looks like the king. Stanislas wants her to regain political power by appearing to the public, and she tries to convince him to find hope and escape. All the while, the queen's enemies plot to keep the lovers together but to thwart their plans.