Ludmila Engelová

The young Prince Charles (Jaromír Hanzlík), the future King of his country Charles IV, is being educated at the French court in the company of his fiancée Blanche (Daniela Kolárová). One day he receives a summons from his father John of Luxembourg (Milos Kopecký) in Italy. He leaves for Italy accompanied by a deputation from Bohemia. On the way the prince's company fights a battle with armed Milanese against heavy odds. Thanks to Charles's perspicacity, the prince's almost naked soldiers win through. In Lucca in Italy Charles joins his father, and here he experiences an amorous adventure and escapes from the traps laid by the Italian rebels.

It is 1905. The police director gets Jindrich Legenda (Eduard Cupák) shadowed as, yet Legenda had served his sentence for a burglary, the jewels have not been found. Russian revolution encouraged also Czech workers to fight for their rights. Radical anarchists are followed by Legenda's friend Karel Wohryzek (Vladimír Mensík) who was forced to collaborate with the police as he was convicted of pornography distribution.

The television production captures the last decade of the life of the now world-renowned painter Karel Purkyně (1834 - 1868) and his struggle for the possibility of creative expression. After studying in Paris, he returns to Prague. He is not recognized, has no success and actually lives on the support of his father, the famous physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkyně. The only understanding he finds is in his admirer Maria, whom he marries. But he loses her too due to his emotional involvement with another woman. He dies too young and leaves behind a work whose artistic value will only be appreciated much later, at the beginning of the twentieth century.