The Milanese nobleman count Andrea Marcosini strolls to the Palais-Royal in Paris, where he spots in the crowd the extraordinary face of a woman with fiery eyes. She tries to escape him, but he chases her as far as a sordid alley behind the Palais-Royal where she disappears. If he is "attached to the step of a woman whose costume announced a deep, radical, ancient, inveterate misery, who was no fairer than so many others he saw each night at the Opéra", it was his eye that was literally spellbound. As soon as he inquires after her he discovers that her name is Marianna and she is married to a composer, performer, instrument-maker and expert on music theory called Gambara - though his music is only beautiful when he is drunk. Marianna sacrifices herself for him, working in humble jobs to pay for their household's upkeep, for she strongly believes in her husband's misunderstood genius. After having tried to save the couple from their miserable existence, to support Gambara from his own means by giving him money (or even worse, by giving him drink), the count finally takes the beautiful Marianna from her husband but then abandons her for a dancer. Marianna then goes back to her husband, more miserable than ever.