Michele, a young mechanic, is in love with Angela Antonia, beautiful but capricious: the girl's father, once he learns of the relationship, has him fired from the place where he works and is forced to move to Naples. He asks for hospitality from his aunt Carmela, concierge in a building, but she has no vacancies and arranges him as Donna Tecla, the owner of a pension who, having three young daughters eager to get married, hopes to arrange at least one. But the three girls are not the best of beauty and Michele, gifted with a beautiful voice, agrees to sing in a club on behalf of an impresario who becomes his friend.
A fallen nobleman convinces a Roman coachman that he has found the way to win at Sambo, a Brazilian game of chance. Sent a messenger to Brazil to gamble, the two men go wild and run up debts. When they realize they have won nothing, they initially fall into total despair; however the coachman had played a coupon from the football pools on his own account. He will win and make things right.
A modest accountant wins a utility vehicle in a contest and publishes an ad looking for a companion to share expenses on a vacation trip. An attractive young lady answers the ad, but at the meeting place, the girl mistakes the accountant for a millionaire, who of course, leaves with her...
In Renaissance Florence, a Florentine trader meets a shipwrecked stranger, who introduces himself as Tito Melema, a young Italianate-Greek scholar. Tito becomes acquainted with several other Florentines, including Nello the barber and a young girl named Tessa. He is also introduced to a blind scholar named Bardo de' Bardi, and his daughter Romola. As Tito becomes settled in Florence, assisting Bardo with classical studies, he falls in love with Romola.
Angela Chiaromonte is the daughter of a wealthy Italian prince who is killed in a fall from his horse. Though Angela stands to inherit half of a large estate, her older half-sister burns the will and thus inherits everything herself, throwing Angela into poverty. Fortunately, Angela is engaged to marry dashing Captain Giovanni Severi - but he soon is captured by Arabs while on an expedition to Africa. Believing him dead, Angela, dedicating her life to his memory, becomes a nun, unaware that her lover has escaped his captors and is returning to Italy. The dramatic climax takes place against a backdrop of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.