The middle-aged and dissolute poet Albert de Lincel pursues Stéphanie, marquise de Rostan who, although attracted, continually rebuffs him. What is the problem? Is it Albert's notorious affair twenty years previously with the celebrated writer Antonia Black? Set as a story within a story, the desperate Albert recounts the true tale of his stormy relationship with Antonia, hoping to set the record straight. But Stéphanie's reluctance, moved though she is, has another cause. She has given her heart to a man far away, toiling at the great novel which will make his name.

Louise Colet (1810-1876), a successful poet, was the mistress of Gustave Flaubert at the time of his writing Madame Bovary. Her brilliantly complex roman à clé sets the impassioned affair between Alfred de Musset (Albert) and George Sand (Antonia) against her own experience of loving two men of towering but contrasting literary reputations.