Escaped from jail, Luis finds refuge on a remote island where, it is said, several people have died long ago of a mysterious illness. He discovers a large abandoned villa. One day, a group of people from another time, come in. The villa and the nature around become the theater of strange phenomena…

Cardinal Mazarin dies, leaving a power vacuum in which the young Louis asserts his intention to govern as well as rule. Mazarin's fiscal advisor, Colbert, warns against Fouquet, the Superintendant who has been systematically looting the treasury and wants to be prime minister. Fouquet believes Louis will soon tire of exercizing power and overplays his hand by offering a bribe to Louis' mistress to be his ally. She reports this to the king who arrests Fouquet. Louis and Colbert design a brilliant strategy to keep merchants making money, nobles in debt, the urban poor working and fed, and peasants untaxed.

An aging King invites disaster when he abdicates to his corrupt, toadying daughters and rejects his one loving, but honest one.