When elderly pensioner Umberto Domenico Ferrari returns to his boarding house from a protest calling for a hike in old-age pensions, his landlady demands her 15,000-lire rent by the end of the month or he and his small dog will be turned out onto the street. Unable to get the money in time, Umberto fakes illness to get sent to a hospital, giving his beloved dog to the landlady's pregnant and abandoned maid for temporary safekeeping.

When a soldier returns home from the wars, he finds that a local landowner has been terrorizing his family. He disguises himself as a bandit known as "The Black Eagle" and begins taking revenge on the landowner by ravaging his "empire". However, things take a different turn when he falls for the landowner's beautiful daughter