The audiobook centres on Hector, a vigorous and athletic young man who has been betrothed to his first cousin, Cordélia, since childhood. Their youthful plans for marriage are postponed by parental mandate, sending Hector to America to complete his education. During this prolonged separation, Cordélia’s artistic temperament takes a dark turn under the influence of an eccentric English painter named Patrick, who introduces her to the occult, hypnotism, and the perilous science of the externalization of sensibility. Upon his return, Hector finds his beloved unsettled, evasive, and drawn into a strange psychological dependency that defies rational explanation.
Despite an elaborate wedding designed to bind them together, the shadow of Patrick looms large through a series of uncanny phenomena, culminating in a wedding portrait that seems to radiate Cordélia's very soul. As Cordélia slips deeper into cataleptic trances and sleepwalking episodes that mirror Patrick's presence in the surrounding countryside and distant cities, Hector is driven to desperation. He struggles against an invisible adversary who commands Cordélia's mind from afar, leading to a tragic confrontation in Venice where the boundaries between the physical and spiritual worlds blur catastrophically. Leroux examines the destructive power of obsession and the limits of human perception, weaving a tale where reason ultimately collapses beneath the weight of unseen forces.
