A skilled swordsman, a petty officer in the French Emperor's Dragoons, has a career furnished with glitter - until he rots in jail.
Herbert de Villeneuve, a young lieutenant, wields the flashiest of cuts with the sabre. But he shows them off right under the noses of his enemies - jealous officers in his regiment.
Falsely accused of smuggling military secrets, an innocent victim of a frame-up, he is thrown into a Paris jail, sentenced...