Today Lady Louise Lendale (Sophia Loren) is eighty-years-old and she tells her long time admirer, British poet Sir Percy (Cecil Parker), all about her eventful life. In the beginning, she was a young laundress working in "Le Mouton Bleu", a renowned Paris whorehouse. There, she met Armand (Paul Newman), both a charming man and a bomb-throwing anarchist, and it wasn't long before she became his mistress. One day, while Armand was away in Switzeland, working for a revolutionary movement aiming to murder a Russian Prince, Louise met the second man in her life, a British Lord she soon called Dicky (David Niven). The latter offered to marry her. In exchange, he would save Armand from the police's grip. She accepted on the condition she could still see Armand.