Feder, widowed after a short marriage of love, moved to Paris, desperate to conquer the world and make a fortune. Seduced by his melancholy and his ambition, the beautiful Rosalind, famous dancer, becomes his mistress and run it as a fashionable painter. Success is not long. One day a rich provincial Feder asked to portray Valentine, his young wife ... Great painter of the human soul and the passions that animate it, Stendhal, in this short novel is reminiscent of the finest pages of his masterpiece The Red and the Black.