The poet Andrei Gorchakov, accompanied by guide and translator Eugenia, is travel through Italy researching the life of an 18th-century Russian composer. In an ancient spa town, he also matches the Domenico, who years earlier had imprisoned their or her own family in his house for seven years to spare them from the world's evils. Seeing some truth in the action of Domenico, Andrei becomes interested in him. In a series of dreams, the poet nostalgia for his homeland and his longing for his wife, his ambivalent feelings for Italy and Eugenia, and his own sense of kinship with Domenico eventually become intertwined.