‘So it’s love,’ the Parisian representative of the King lets slip, in an attempt to get his taciturn fellow traveller, a Swiss banker, to open up about the reason for his unhappy state of mind. It is September 1785, both gentlemen are on board a French three-master headed for America and both are running away from love. From passionate, impossible loves, to be precise. The banker’s love interest is none other than Belle van Zuylen. She and he had met two years earlier and the attraction had been immediate, but Isabelle was married and the banker was engaged. Nevertheless, an illfated love affair ensued and it was to have long-lasting effects on van Zuylen’s life, in Joke J. Hermsen’s mind, that is.

In summer 1785, Isabella flees Colombier, her dull hometown in Switzerland, and her equally dull marriage, for Paris. There she consults famous doctor and alchemist Count Balsamo Cagliostro, hoping he can cure her stomach ailments and ‘vapours’. She enters into intense discussions with the doctor on such matters as morality and happiness, circling the question that torments her: should one pursue personal happiness at the expense of the happiness of others? Only a passionate, deep love makes one really feel alive, but it carries within it a destructive power.