A rich businessman living alone is deprived of the nephew he was to have brought up decides on his doctor's advice to search for the four illegitimate children he once fathered, which leads him to accept responsibility for his actions.
After a messy divorce, a struggling writer takes a holiday on the French Riviera, where he decides to investigate a series of mysterious incidents.
Inspired by the life of 19th century composer Robert Schumann, this fiction tells the decline of Hans Richter, a great German musician. Then dying, he feels his reason leaving him, while his wife gets closer to his disciple, Friedrich Turner, who has endless admiration for him. After his death, Turner helped make him a legend.
