Old Bentinho had built in Engenho Novo a copy of the Matacavalos house where he was raised, with the same parlor of medallions of Caesar, Augustus, Nero and Massinissa and the same little garden. The aim, he says, was "to tie the two ends of life together, and to restore adolescence in old age."
In the same chapter he confesses that he did not succeed: "I could not recompose what was nor what I was." In everything, he says, if the face is the same, the physiognomy is different, and he himself is missing. A certificate giving him twenty years of age might deceive strangers, but not him. From the failure of the house the book is born: in recounting the past, he attempts what the copy did not accomplish.
In chapter CXLIV, Bentinho explains why he reproduced the house. When his mother died and he went to the old house for a long inspection visit, "the whole house did not recognize me." He then let it be demolished and, later, had the reproduction made in Engenho Novo.