March 15, 1848; the revolution breaks out in the town of Pest. Yet at café Pilvax, in among he revolutionary youth, there is the informer of the imperial court as well. Hearing the news of the attack led by Jellasics, the inhabitants of the villages pour into the national army, and Hajdú Gyurka also escapes from his landlord. Petőfi is there at the camp of the revolutionaries, raising them to enthusiasm with his poetry.
Faithful to his word, Michael Tímar, captain of the St. Barbara, becomes the guardian of Kondya, daughter of a Turkish aristocrat on the run. Later, he weds the grateful young Turkish girl whom he saved from the waters of the Danube. While skillfully managing his wife's fortune, entrepreneur Tímar becomes an important wholesaler of wheat and exports his products to Brazil. But his marriage of convenience proves a failure. He is torn between the demands of bourgeois civilization, governed by money, and the ideal of freedom, consisting of living simply within nature. He then takes refuge by the side of the sweet Noemi on an island on the Danube.
