conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled The Horseman on the Roof about Angelo, Italian, France with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Angelo is an young Italian nobleman and soldier whose hot-headedness has forced him into a desperate exile in France. While making his way slowly back to Italy, he witnesses the intense ravages of a cholera epidemic in Provence, and his natural romanticism, heroism, and thirst for adventure take over and change the course of his travels. the author, known as a 20th-century master of French letters, also wrote the lyrical <I><A HREF="/exec/obidos/Title=The%20Man%20Who%20Planted%20Trees/${0}">The Man Who Planted Trees</A>.</I>
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a book titled The Horseman on the Roof about Angelo, Italian, France with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Horseman on the Roof: In July 1832, Italian patriots hiding out in Aix, France, are betrayed by one of their own, and Austrian agents are on their trail.\nOne patriot, Giacomo, is dragged away and executed.\nHis wife runs off to warn their friend, Angelo Pardi (Olivier Martinez), a young Italian nobleman in France raising money for the Italian revolution against Austria.\nAs the agents descend on his apartment, Angelo escapes into the countryside.\nAt Meyrargues, Angelo looks for his compatriot and childhood friend, Maggionari, and then continues on to another village, where he writes to his mother, "Always fleeing.\nWhen can I fight and show what your son can do.\n" His mother purchased his commission as a colonel in the Piedmont Hussars, and he\'s never seen battle.\nAngelo encounters Maggionari, who turns out to be the traitor.\nWhen the Austrian agents arrive, Angelo fights them off and escapes.\nThe next day, Angelo enters a village ravaged by a cholera epidemic.\nThe sight of the corpses abandoned to the scavenging crows sickens him.\nHe meets a country physician, who shows him how to treat cholera victims by vigorously rubbing alcohol on the skin.\nAngelo continues north, passing a small village where corpses are being burned.\nHe meets a young woman and two children and accompanies them to the outskirts of Manosque.\nThe young woman, who is a tutor and lover of books, gives him a copy of Rinaldo and Armida as a parting gift.\nWhile in Manosque, Angelo is captured by a paranoid mob who accuse him of poisoning the town fountain.\nHe is taken to the authorities, who soon abandon their posts in fear.\nAngelo searches for a compatriot, but encounters the Austrian agents.\nAngelo eludes them, and with sword in hand, fights his way through the hysterical mob and escapes across the rooftops.\nFrom his refuge above the town, Angelo watches one of the agents chased down and beaten to death, and later watches the piles of corpses being burned in the night.\nTo escape the rain, Angelo enters a dwelling where he is discovered by Countess Pauline de Théus (Juliette Binoche).\nApologizing for his presence, Angelo reassures her that he is a gentleman.\nPauline offers him food and drink, and soon he falls asleep from exhaustion.\nThe following morning, Pauline is gone and Angelo joins the forced evacuation of the town.\nIn the hills outside Manosque, Angelo meets his compatriot, Giuseppe, who possesses money raised for the Italian resistance, but which cannot now be delivered because of the quarantine and roadblocks.\nAngelo agrees to deliver the money to Milan using backroads.\nBefore leaving, he encounters the traitor, Maggionari, who attempts to kill Angelo before succumbing to cholera.\nAngelo and Pauline meet again, and she joins him in a daring river escape.\nAt Les Mées, rather than head east toward the Italian border, Angelo accompanies Pauline north toward her castle near Gap.\nAngelo insists it is his duty, so they set off through the countryside, avoiding the plague-ridden towns.\nForced to camp out in the open, romantic feelings develop between the two, but Angelo remains gallant.\nAsked if he comes from a military family, Angelo reveals he never knew his father, saying, "He came to Italy with Napoleon, then left".\nEverything he learned in life came from his mother.\nThe next day, they travel to a heavily-garrisoned village where they visit a friend of Pauline\'s husband and learn that he returned to Manosque to search for her.\nDetermined to find her husband, Pauline leaves Angelo and rides off.\nAngelo follows, only to see her captured by the militia, who take her into quarantine at a convent.\nKnowing if she stays there she will die, Angelo surrenders to the militia in order to rescue her.\nPauline understands he\'s risked his life again for her.\nAngelo orchestrates another daring escape by setting fire to the convent.\nImpressed by Angelo\'s bravery and intelligence, Pauline promises to trust the young Piedmont Hussard, saying, "I\'ll obey you like a soldier".\nTheir mutual affection continues to grow as they make their way toward her castle at Théus.\nAs night descends, they seek shelter from the rain in a small abandoned mansion, where they warm themselves at the fireplace and drink wine.\nPauline conveys her feelings for him, but Angelo remains a gentleman.\nPauline recounts how she met her husband, forty years her senior.\nShe was a sixteen-year-old country doctor\'s daughter when she found him near death with a bullet in his chest.\nHer father saved his life, and she tended to him for days, nursing him back to health.\nWhen he recovered, he left without revealing his identity, but six months later, he returned and asked for her hand in marriage—revealing he was a Count with extensive property.\nAngelo prepares to leave, but Pauline decides to stay in the mansion for the night.\nAs she climbs the staircase, she collapses showing symptoms of cholera.\nAngelo rushes her to the fireplace, rips the clothing from her body, and vigorously rubs alcohol on her skin—tending to her throughout the night trying to save her life.\nIn the morning, Angelo is awakened by Pauline\'s frail but loving touch.\nSoon they are back on the road, completing the last few miles to Pauline\'s castle, where they are met by her husband, Count Laurent de Théus.\nAngelo leaves and returns to Italy to fight in the revolution.\nOne year later, Pauline returns to Aix where everything appears as it once was—but the cholera has taken a heavy toll.\nShe looks for the house near the Bishop\'s Palace where Angelo stayed.\nShe writes letters to Angelo, inquiring after his condition.\nAnother year passes, and Pauline finally receives a letter at the castle from Angelo.\nShe walks off alone to read it, while the Count watches from a window, knowing Angelo\'s memory would not fade.\nPauline looks east toward the snow-covered Alps that separate her from Italy and Colonel Angelo Pardi, the young gallant officer who once saved her life.