Claude, shy, instructs Michel to declare his love to Simone, the young girl he loves. But Michel seduces her and becomes engaged to her. She surprises him in the arms of another, breaks off her engagement and marries Claude, whom she has come to know and love.

Political turmoil convulses 19th-century Russia as Razumov, a young student preparing for a career in the czarist bureaucracy, unwittingly becomes embroiled in the assassination of a public official.