This is the tale of an encounter between Lazzaro, a good-hearted young peasant who is often mistaken for simple-minded, and Tancredi, a young nobleman cursed by his imagination. Life in their isolated pastoral village Inviolata is dominated by the terrible Marchesa Alfonsina de Luna, the queen of cigarettes. A loyal bond is sealed when Tancredi asks Lazzaro to help him orchestrate his own kidnapping. This strange and improbable alliance is a revelation to Lazzaro, whose perception of it as a powerful friendship will eventually allow him to travel in time in search of Tancredi. Roaming the big city for the first time, Lazzaro is like a fragment of the past lost in the modern world.