The servants said that even the waters of the Orinoco obeyed Misia Schmutter, the white-haired old lady, so proud of her Prussian ancestry, who treated the world like her slave. She had seen a glint of her own ruthlessness in her grandson Lucien's eye. Worshipping and torturing him by turns she cultivated in him a terrible understanding of tyranny and the true nature of power. She passed on to him a love of beauty and science and of roulette.

Even after her death 'the Empress of the Orinoco' would hold Lucien in a relentless stranglehold, clinging like a tiger to his back, a demon people could glimpse through Lucien's gentleness. Misia Schmutter would be there as he set out from the plains of San Fernando de Apure for the extraordinary journeys of his life, first to Caracas where he lived in sumptuous excess in a gothic palace, crowded with the human vultures who took advantage of his almost demented generosity. Later, when he was declared a public menace and locked away, tales of his extravagance would continue to flourish, as would the legend of his extraordinary luck at gambling.

Like a pilgrim to a shrine, Lucien made his way to the German fatherland which Misia Schmutter had so passionately described to him, to find the Nazis on the verge of havoc. He returned to his beloved Venezuela, to be imprisoned for treason and escape through the forest. Arrested and convicted for a murder he had not committed.