Colonel Chabert was a proud cavalryman of Napoleon's armies... until the day a Cossack split his skull with a saber blow. The story could have ended there. But here is this man, dead and buried for years, suddenly reappearing in Paris. The street where he lived has changed its name, his house has been sold and demolished, and his wife has remarried.

Desperate, Chabert asks lawyer Derville to help him reclaim his name...