The noble Pantaleo Di Santa Paola has just died, and the preamble to his will is a confession in which he claims that in his youth he had a relationship with a circus rider that produced twin sons.
Marco, returning home to Livorno after having spent eight years in prison, finds his wife Giovanna married to another man, who the son believes is his real father. He decides to commit suicide but then he meets Elisa, who dissuades him and he begins to live with her and her father.
Nadia, a young Soviet journalist who is passing through Pompeii, discovers the power that comes from the Catholic faith when the painter she loves, Paolo, and who saved her from drowning during the shipwreck of the cruise in which they met, is at the gates of death because of a serious illness whose symptoms are similar to those of leprosy.
