A 29-year-old Italian who lives in Brooklyn has a brief romance with an actress.

A young mechanical genius invents a recording device that can play back the voices of the dead. Here, the voice is that of the genius's evil-dead grandmother. A woman whose malign influence scarred her own children for life and corrupted the innocence of her grandchildren.

Asked by Francis I to tutor his son, Diane de Poitiers becomes the future King Henry II's mistress in 1500s France.