The upright – and uptight – prince Karol de Roswald meets Lucrezia Floriani, a former actress with a chequered past. Despite their very different backgrounds and tastes, a passionate love affair develops. The mutual friend who has brought them together, Salvator Albani, is astounded.



Weaving intricate patterns from the shifting alliances between these three principal characters, George Sand traces the dramatically swift rise and painfully slow destruction of the relationship between a severe and difficult young man and a heroically generous older woman.



Published in 1846, the year before Sand's separation from Frédéric Chopin after a ten-year relationship, Lucrezia Floriani minutely examines the character of the hyper-sensitive, unworldly Karol while exposing the strain on its heroine of sustaining an emotionally draining mismatch. The faults on both sides can only lead to one end.