Mario Casaleggio plays a jeweler who falls in love with Liane de Rosny. He woos her by promising her a piece of jewelry she wants. Casaleggio also plays a highwayman who also longs for the lady. One day, he and his band seize and kill Gabriel Moreau, a courier carrying a valuable cargo. The jeweler is mistaken for the highwayman, and is sentenced to death.
It's based on a real-life case. During the night of 27-28 April 1796, a courier was killed while carrying seven million livres to Paris for the Army of Italy. Arrests were made, and one Joseph Lesurques was one of the accused. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. However, one of the band claimed that Lesurques was innocent. Then man they wanted was Andre Dubosq. Dubosq was found guilty and executed. However, so was Lesurques. His family spent most of the 19th Century trying to get the conviction overturned, to no avail.
Casaleggio was a well known stage actor who appeared in about a dozen movies from 1911 through 1949. He looks too stout for his role, from which I conclude he had stared in stage versions of the story. He died in 1953 at the age of 75.
