A wealthy widow becomes infatuated with an adventurer posing as a poet and, forgetting her responsibilities as a mother and her no longer young age, falls prey to a love frenzy in her family that puts her at odds with her daughter, who has just left boarding school, and her own brother, who is all about scientific research. The girl, who has learned of the alleged poet's less-than-honest intentions, tries every means to drive him away and restore her mother's sentimental balance. For this she pretends to be in love with him who, attracted by her youth and rich dowry, proposes that she elope.

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.

A university student falls in love with a seamstress. But one day he meets a beautiful woman and things become complicated.