André-Louis Moreau, a young man of unknown parentage, has good prospects in store as a country lawyer in pre-revolutionary France. But an unfair duel with a ruthlessly cruel aristocrat, the Count de La Tour d’Azyr, leaves André’s best friend dead. Vowing revenge against the killer, André (who does not believe a word of what he preaches) carries on his friend’s work as a firebrand of the French Revolution; but now André is a fugitive from the King’s justice and he is forced to hide from the King’s soldiers among a troupe of traveling actors. Over a period of months, André becomes wildly successful (though incognito) as an actor and director, though a failure in romance. But the hated aristocrat interferes again with his life; and now André must fight for the cause he once disdained. He apprentices himself to an expert teacher of swordwork, and becomes a voice of the people in the new National Assembly. His struggles against the aristocrats, and his vow to avenge the death of his friend, lead to revelations that will stun all Paris. This is the book that starts with Sabatini’s most famous quote, "He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad," a sentence that Sabatini had engraved on his tombstone. The characters, the joyful humor and dramatic sweep of the author’s writing, the color and detail of their lives as the French Revolution comes to crisis and sweeps aside all the old ways, carry this book and justify its reputation as one of the finest historical romances ever written.