József Pakots

A young woman falls for a flirtatious count only to find that he has no intention of marrying her. To her distress, the count still pursues her even after she has married another.

An aging Casanova, long dead, is resurrected when factory heiress Susanne Hilmer’s longing brings him back as the modern “Knight Heinrich Holanden,” only to trail a trail of broken hearts, from Susanne and her sister Margarete’s suicides to would-be lovers Ninette and the Countess, before he’s grievously wounded and cared for by the pure-hearted Baroness Livia. When Livia, the only woman he ever truly loves, takes her own life in shame, Casanova, heartbroken, returns to his tomb, closing the door on his final, unfulfilled passion.

Tragedy strikes after a painter has an affair with the wife of a prince.

A bankrupt landowner, Redwitz, emigrates to America fleeing his card debts and leaving his daughter in the care of his neighbour, the Baroness Rajk, at the cost of the family jewels. When the jewels are gone, Veronika is chased away from the house. She grows up to be a beautiful young woman and marries a gifted, but poor composer, George Tishler. The young man falls ill because of hard work and his treatment is financed by Baroness Rajk on the condition that they do not tell Veronika’s now rich father about her marriage and child. Moving into her father’s house, Veronika complies with this wish for the sake of her husband, but soon grows to enjoy the role of a spoilt and celebrated girl and ceases missing her previous, poorer lifestyle. She pays for her infidelity with the loss of her child.

In post–World War I Europe, drifter Jim Jeffries, son of a disgraced stock speculator, stumbles into high society at a London palace card party and parlayed his luck into wealth, only to lose it all in a cutthroat Chinese port and end up in prison. Upon release, he secretly marries the resourceful Jane, reinvents himself in America as Riche Richson, and, newly prosperous, reunites with Jane, now companion to a millionaire’s daughter, on a whirlwind transatlantic adventure that proves fortune can favor the bold.