By all rights, Charlemagne Persant, who was born in the mid-nineteeth century on a hardscrabble farm in the countryside near Lyon, was destined to have the life of any poor farmer. But his grandfather was convinced that this child was meant for greater things, so he tempted fate by giving him the name of an emperor. The grandfather’s constant references to the exceptional fate that awaited him developed in Charlemagne a kind of charisma that made the world bow to his will. Over the years, his sharp business sense and cold determination inflexibly dictated his behavior, leading him – through various means, including a marriage well above his social standing – to rise through the ranks of society. Neither empathy, nor remorse, nor compassion ever influenced his decisions. Never that is, except perhaps for a prostitute whose skin was as dark as Charlemagne’s own heart, to whom he once showed the only affection he was ever capable of. Those who give nothing can transmit nothing but ruin and misery. The love that got away – the spice of everyone’s life – would turn that veritable Vulcan’s old age into a cruelly blazing inferno. Woman and child will attempt to exist beyond his memory. The Affair of the Living – both the breathtaking tale of an exceptional fate and an historical saga of lat nineteeth century France – has all the ingredients of a classic tragedy. Even for the most powerful, failure for lack of love, hides behind the greatest success stories.

In this historical saga and tale of a prodigy, we follow the life of a farmer’s son whose all-devouring ambition takes him to the pinnacle of Lyon’s late nineteet century bourgeois society. But a loveless life, even one propelled by the strength and power of builders of empires, produces only chimera and mortar-less walls. The bigger they come, the harder they fall.