On a hot day of summer two hunters, two friends - the Marquis d'Albon and Baron Philippe de Sucy - lost in a forest in the Ile-de-France see a feminine silhouette under the foliage of a abandoned park. In this young woman, unable to do anything but mechanically repeating the single word, "Farewell," the disturbed Philippe recognizes the Countess Stephanie de Vandieres, the mistress he loved passionately and of who he was tragically separated in 1812."