Plot

A anarchist leader (Fulvio) wishes to retire, as he is old and tired. He tries to hide himself, but his friends find him and insist he carries on helping them.

The political prisoner Fulvio Imbriani is released ill from prison and the authorities expect to find his rebel friends though him. However, he returns to his family's real state and recovers his health with his siblings. When his lover Charlotte unexpectedly arrives in the property, she stays with Fulvio but his sister overhears Charlotte telling that their friends would be arriving on the next morning and calls the authorities. The soldiers kill a great number of revolutionaries but Fulvio escapes with Charlotte that was shot on the back. She dies and Fulvio travels with his comrades but without enthusiasm. Sooner he betrays the group, trying to flee to United States with the money of the revolutionaries and his new lover Francesca.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Against the backdrop of the Bourbon Restoration, Lombard aristocrat Fulvio Imbriani, a former political extremist who once served under Napoleon, is finally released from an Austrian jail, after a lengthy sentence for his part in the secret Sublime Brotherhood. He strives to resume normal family life, but his Hungarian lover, Charlotte, together with his ex-comrades, succeeds in convincing him to take part in a revolutionary cause in the south. In fact, Fulvio considers the effort futile and fails to stop his sister Esther from reporting the conspirators. But the trap fails to catch the intended prey and, evading arrest, the comrades meet and bury Charlotte, who was killed in an exchange of fire with the gendarmerie. Fulvio is still with them, despite repeated attempts to get out of what he was sure would be a fiasco. On arriving south, Fulvio goes ahead to scout the land where he betrays his red shirted comrades to a priest who tells the authorities. However Fulvio is tricked by the sole survivor of the party that the revolt has succeeded. He puts on his discarded red shirt to be killed alongside his comrades, massacred by the soldiers and peasants.

The year is 1816. Napoléon Bonaparte has fallen, and as the last pockets of revolutionaries and fervent members of the secret sect of the Sublime Brotherhood struggle to resist a horrible fate, the Bourbon Restoration begins. However, one of them who was fiercely persecuted by the police for his beliefs--the noble Lombard aristocrat, Fulvio Imbriani--will eventually find refuge in the ancestral mansion, after twenty long years of dedication to the cause. Now, as Fulvio timidly rediscovers the joys of freedom, he dares to dream of starting a family and a new life away from bloodshed; but, does his homecoming mark the end of a political commitment that nearly obliterated all his personal aspirations?—Nick Riganas