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The protagonist, Calisto Elói, a nobleman from Trás-os-Montes, austere and conservative, is a kind of satirical embodiment of that elected deputy. Calisto goes to live in Lisbon, where he allows himself to be corrupted by the luxury and pleasure that prevail in the capital, taking a distant cousin, Ifigénia, as his lover, and moving from the Miguelist position to the liberal party in government. Ironically, Calisto's wife, Teodora, a prosaic villager, imitates him in debauchery, seeing herself despised by her husband, joins a self-interested cousin and succumbs herself to the vices of modernity.