In the 17th-century Venice in an alternative world where humans and some animals live together and even can be coupled, Don Lope de Villalobos y Sangrin,[2] a Spanish wolf, and Armand Raynal de Maupertuis,[3] a French fox, are hired by old and rich Cénile Spilorcio to retrieve a treasure map from a Turkish ship.

On her way, the galley sails into the Turkish ship, the same one from where they stole the map, and boards her; in the battle, Maupertuis and Don Lope are set free and help the Turks gain the upper hand, setting the slaves free and taking Captain Mendoza, the villainous captain of the galley, prisoner.

Don Lope and Raïs Kader, captain of the Turkish ship, have an argument and promise each other to arrange for a duel when time is convenient.

Gaining control of the monster, they manage to reach an island of the archipelago where the treasure is supposedly hidden, where they meet with eccentric scientist Bombastus Johannes Theophrastus Almagestus Wernher von Ulm.

The King decides, as a precaution, to send Maupertuis and Don Lope seek the "Maître d'Armes", an Earthman of great military expertise, who had previously helped defeat the Prince.

As the Maître d'Armes gathers his three companions of the previous campaigns against Prince Jean, Mendoza's army marches upon the capital of the Moon.

Meanwhile, Maupertuis and Don Lope's party plot to set the King free from his brother; to regain their honor lost serving the Prince, the pirates join them.

In the confusion, Prince Jean is taken prisoner, the king is restored to power, the mimes gain an equal social status with other Selenites, and Mendoza and Spilorcio are sent into hiding, while the lovers are reunited.

As allusions to modern culture, writer Alain Ayroles notably mentions a pastiche of Andy Warhol's painting; architectural features alluding to Jules Verne and Space: 1999; and an explicit attempt to recreate the atmosphere of Alien (to which it is further alluded when Prince Jean is said to have planned to exile his brother into deep space "so that none shall hear him scream").

[5] Allusions to classical culture are plentiful; writer Alain Ayroles notably mentions Bombastus drawing in the fashion of da Vinci, Hobbes' Leviathan and Rabelais.