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.

Based on a Victor Hugo play, and scored with music from the later opera by Giuseppe Verdi, the film tells about a hunchbacked clown whose beautiful daughter falls in love with the lecherous king.