The infamous writer, The Marquis de Sade of 18th Century France, is imprisoned for unmentionable activities at Charanton Insane Asylumn. He manages to befriend the young Abbe de Coulmier, who runs the asylumn, along with a beautiful laundress named Madeline. Things go terribly wrong when the Abbe finds out that the Marquis books are being secretly published. Emperor Napolean contemplates sending Dr. Royer-Collard to oversee the asylumn, a man famed for his torturous punishments. It could mean the end of Charanton and possibly the Marquis himself.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive wrote Wordsworth of the early days of the French Revolution, but the storming of the Bastille led, not to freedom, but to the Terror, the dictatorship of Napolean and the dreary bureaucracies of the 19th century.Sir Kenneth Clark traces the progressive disillusionment of the artists of the Romantic movement through the music of Beethoven, the poetry of Byron and the sculpture of Rodin.