Rubião, a schoolteacher from Barbacena, inherits everything from a dying philosopher, Quincas Borba, on the sole condition that he look after the dog who bears the master's name. He moves to Rio, meets on the train a couple, the Palhas, who guide him at every step, falls in love with his friend's wife, and ends up mad, believing himself to be Napoleon III, back in the town where he began. The novel opens with him already rich, at the window of the Botafogo house (chapter I), and only afterward goes back.
Barbacena and the inheritance
In 1867, in Barbacena, the philosopher Quincas Borba, who lives with a grain of madness, has Rubião, brother of the widow Piedade, as his only friend, and is looked after by him for almost six months (chapter IV). He gives his name to the dog so as to survive in the dog's name (chapter V), and explains to Rubião the doctrine of Humanitas: through the death of his aunt, run over by a carriage whose owner was hungry, he says there is no death and that war preserves. Rubião agrees to become a disciple (chapter VI). Before leaving for Rio, the philosopher registers his will and entrusts the dog to Rubião (chapter VIII). From Rio he sends a letter in which he says he is Saint Augustine, and Rubião, who takes it for delirium, hides it from the doctor for fear the will will be annulled (chapter X). The Court newspapers carry the philosopher's death (chapter XI), and Brás Cubas writes to Rubião to give him the news (chapter XIII).
The will makes Rubião universal heir, on one condition: keep the dog, treat it as a person, bury it among flowers, and keep its bones in an urn (chapter XIV). Since he had already given the dog to his comadre Angélica, Rubião hurries to get it back, fearing he will lose the inheritance (chapter XVI). At home, he now understands the allegory of the starving tribes and sees himself as the victor (chapter XVIII). He has a Mass said for his friend (chapter XIX) and sets out for Rio (chapter XX).
Rubião at Court
On the train, Rubião sits facing Cristiano Palha and Sofia and tells them of the inheritance, which he reckons at no less than three hundred contos. Palha's eyes shine when Rubião says he will stay at Court and perhaps go to Europe, but on hearing about the inheritance he no longer shines; he reflects and asks for discretion (chapter XXI). Palha guides him: he recommends a lawyer, a relative of his, invites him to dinner in Santa Teresa (chapter XXIII), and celebrates the end of the probate when the charge accusing the philosopher of dementia is dropped (chapter XXV). Rubião moves to Botafogo, and Palha accompanies him on his shopping (chapter XXVI). In the garden, he wrestles with temptation over Sofia, his friend's wife (chapter XXVIII).
Rubião receives Freitas, a hanger-on who comes often to lunch or dine, praises everything, and leaves with cigars in his pockets (chapter XXIX), and Carlos Maria, a slow, cold, superior young man (chapter XXXI). Sofia sends strawberries and a note which, at her husband's order, summons Rubião to dinner in Santa Teresa (chapter XXXII). In Santa Teresa, Dona Tônica, unmarried, sees in him the husband Heaven would have reserved for her, and notices the glances between him and Sofia (chapter XXXVII). In the garden, under the moonlight, Rubião, suddenly loquacious, compares her eyes to stars (chapter XXXIX) and makes her a shameless proposal (chapter XL). Sofia pleads, and Rubião only loosens the hand holding her (chapter XLI); Major Siqueira, Dona Tônica's father, appears in the garden and sees their two hands held, but she invents the anecdote of Father Mendes to cover the delay, and Rubião, awkwardly, sustains the lie (chapter XLII). At home, Dona Tônica weeps over her anger and her spinsterhood (chapter XLIII), and Rubião goes down the hill between remorse and hope (chapter XLV).
Sofia tells Palha what happened, and Palha minimizes the affair until he confesses that he owes Rubião a great deal of money; the narrator reveals that the note with the strawberries had been drafted by him and merely copied out by Sofia (chapter L). Ashamed, Rubião decides to go to Minas, but Camacho, the politician who had won him over at a lunch (chapter LVIII), cuts him off on the road (chapter LVI). Camacho and Palha understand each other with a glance and hold Rubião at Court, one proposing to accompany him later, the other dangling the deputy's seat (chapter LIX). Rubião rescues a boy from under a carriage on Rua da Ajuda (chapter LX) and puts five contos into the Atalaia, Camacho's sheet (chapter LXI), which afterward publishes a whole column about the rescue (chapter LXVII). In Santa Teresa he meets Sofia's aunt and cousin, Maria Benedita, a country girl (chapter LXIV).
The Palhas rise
Rubião becomes Palha's partner without understanding the figures, and at the ball where Maria Benedita times Sofia's waltz with Carlos Maria, the young man declares himself to Sofia, saying he spent an hour between the sea and her house (chapter LXIX). He had invented the hour on the beach; he had not even gone there, and Sofia repeats it in memory like a stubborn musical phrase (chapter LXXIII, chapter LXXIV). Rubião, tormented by jealousy of a rival, sounds out Carlos Maria (chapter LXX). Advised by the major to marry (chapter LXXVIII), he dreams of weddings with titled brides who end up with Sofia's face (chapter LXXXII), and Palha has a hunch: Rubião is the one who will marry Maria Benedita (chapter LXXXIII).
On the return from Praia Formosa, a tilbury driver tells how he took a young man with moustaches and large eyes to Rua da Harmonia, where a lady in a veil arrived later on foot and went in (chapter LXXXIX), and Rubião spends the following chapters looking for proof of Sofia's guilt in this (chapter XC). He finds a letter in her handwriting to Carlos Maria (chapter XCIX), and Camacho offers him a candidacy for deputy (chapter C). At Freitas's funeral, which he pays for, the coupé makes onlookers take him for a senator (chapter CI). Rubião pours out what he feels to Sofia at Flamengo (chapter CIII) and hands her the letter (chapter CIV). It was the commission's circular, and Sofia, angry at herself, breaks the porcelain mandarin (chapter CV). The narrator then tells the reader that the driver gave no names and told no true story: the slander was the reader's and Rubião's (chapter CVI).
Away from Flamengo, Rubião signs for five contos in Sofia's subscription and asks Palha for ten, which Palha, who holds his securities, eventually gives (chapter CVIII). He dreams of Palha whipping Sofia and of a triumphal carriage (chapter CIX), and polishes an article by Camacho (chapter CXI), to the point of regarding himself as the author of what he read (chapter CXIII). He sends Sofia a diamond, hears from her the explanation of the letter, with a tear, and the news that Maria Benedita is to marry (chapter CXV). He discovers that the groom is Carlos Maria, and that he had taken one person for another (chapter CXVI). Maria Benedita had loved him in silence since the ball on Rua dos Arcos, and it was Dona Fernanda, his cousin, who decided on the match and afterward drew the confession from him (chapter CXVIII). Carlos Maria comes to like her on learning that she is adored (chapter CXX), and the two marry and leave for Europe (chapter CXXIV).
Returning from the packet boat, Palha proposes dissolving the partnership, saying he is going to run a bank (chapter CXXVIII). The bank did not exist: the narrator reveals that Palha prospers through shares, bonds and war supplies, and already thinks of a mansion and a barony (chapter CXXIX). Major Siqueira complains that the Palhas did not invite him to the birthday or the wedding (chapter CXXX), and Dona Tônica postpones a dress in order to buy preserves for Rubião's dinner (chapter CXXXII).
The Imperial Delirium
The legend of the rich man who was a philosopher's disciple attracts dinner guests, who dine at six sharp, with or without the host (chapter CXXXIII), and on Rubião's desk stand busts of Napoleon I and Napoleon III (chapter CXXXIV). Sofia, praised in the press, cuts off her modest friendships (chapter CXXXVIII). On an outing to Tijuca, absent-minded, she whips the horse in anger and falls (chapter CXLIII). In January 1870, the barber Lucien leaves Rubião only the goatee and moustache, copying the bust of Napoleon III (chapter CXLVI).
When he visits Sofia, Rubião gets into the coupé behind her (chapter CL) and lowers the curtains (chapter CLI). He speaks to her as a lover, recalls a meeting that never took place, asks her to call him Luís, and promises Palha a dukedom (chapter CLIII). News of the mania spreads (chapter CLV), and with the Franco-Prussian War the crises grow sharper, with the dinner guests promoted to marshals (chapter CLVI). Sofia, seeing in his affliction the effect of love for her, feels a compassion made of sympathy and self-interest (chapter CLVII). On a rainy day she turns over the names of the past, among them that of Carlos Maria, a tedious figure, in a desire without an object that retains no name (chapter CLIX), and the sun refuses light to that desire (chapter CLX), and the will that seemed imperious turns into a whim (chapter CLXIII).
Palha installs Rubião and the dog in a little house on Rua do Príncipe (chapter CLXV), and the friends of Botafogo do not follow him (chapter CLXVI). Dr. Falcão, a physician and deputy, examines him and believes he can recover (chapter CLXVII). Carlos Maria and Maria Benedita return from Europe (chapter CLXIX), and Rubião bursts into their drawing room, announces the fall of the Ministry, and offers a portfolio to Carlos Maria (chapter CLXXI).
The fall and the return to Barbacena
Teófilo, Dona Fernanda's husband, arrives crestfallen at not being included in the new Ministry (chapter CLXXIV) and is consoled with a provincial presidency (chapter CLXXVII). Rubião loses his interlocutors: Camacho receives him coldly (chapter CLXXIX), and Major Siqueira shows him to the door with the story of a carriage, while Dona Tônica, who had courted him, is engaged to Rodrigues, a widower and clerk in the War Ministry (chapter CLXXX, chapter CLXXXI).
Rubião walks down Rua da Ajuda gesturing to an invisible empress, followed by street boys (chapter CLXXXII), and the father of a boy he had rescued recognizes him (chapter CLXXXIII). Palha, with Dr. Falcão, has him committed to a sanatorium (chapter CLXXXV), and Dr. Falcão concludes that Rubião was the lover of Palha's wife (chapter CLXXXVI). In the abandoned house on Rua do Príncipe, Sofia barely conceals her disgust, and Dona Fernanda is moved by the thin dog (chapter CLXXXVIII). Palha collects three contos and two hundred from Rubião's assets (chapter CXCI), and in October Sofia opens the Botafogo salons with a ball (chapter CXCII).
Rubião vanishes from the sanatorium (chapter CXCIII). A few days earlier, Palha had found him sane, given him a hundred mil-réis, and asked the director not to hasten his discharge (chapter CXCIV). Rubião and the dog arrive in Barbacena, and he shouts the motto he had forgotten (chapter CXCV). A storm breaks (chapter CXCVI), the two wander through the night in the open, and Rubião takes the stars for chandeliers in a ballroom (chapter CXCVII). His comadre Angélica takes him in, and in his fever he speaks of the captured King of Prussia (chapter CXCIX). He dies a few days later, placing on his head a crown only he can see (chapter CC). The dog falls ill, runs off after its master, and is found dead in the street, and the narrator tells the reader to weep or laugh (chapter CCI).