The dead man and the delirium
In nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro, Brás Cubas, son of a wealthy family that invented a noble origin for itself, writes his memoirs after death and begins at the end. He died on a Friday in August 1869, at sixty-four, unmarried, and eleven friends carried him to the cemetery (ch. I). He says an idea killed him: an anti-hypochondriac plaster, which would make his name appear printed everywhere and whose invention earned him pneumonia (ch. II, ch. V). Sick, he receives a visit from Virgília, whom he had loved years earlier (ch. VI), and he raves: a hippopotamus carries him to the origin of the centuries, where Nature or Pandora, mother and enemy, denies him more life and shows him the parade of the centuries (ch. VII).
Childhood, Marcela, and Coimbra
Brás is born on October 20, 1805 (ch. IX, ch. X). A spoiled boy, pampered by his father, he smashes the head of a female slave and makes the servant boy Prudêncio his horse (ch. XI); at nine, to get revenge for a dinner, he exposes Dr. Vilaça's kiss on Dona Eusébia (ch. XII). At seventeen, he falls in love with the Spanish woman Marcela and spends on her the money he takes from his father and mother and signs for against the inheritance (ch. XIV, ch. XV). His father pays off the debts and has him shipped off by force to Europe (ch. XVII, ch. XVIII). Brás takes his degree at Coimbra, mediocre and a party-goer (ch. XX), and returns to Rio in time to see his mother die of stomach cancer (ch. XXIII).
Eugênia and the lost fiancée
Withdrawn to Tijuca, he visits Dona Eusébia and meets her daughter Eugênia, pretty and lame from birth (ch. XXX, ch. XXXII). He gives her her first kiss and, a week later, comes down from the mountain so as not to become tied to her (ch. XXXIII, ch. XXXV). Before that, still in Tijuca, his father had proposed to him a candidacy for deputy and a fiancée, Virgília, daughter of Councilor Dutra (ch. XXVI, ch. XXVIII), but Lobo Neves carries off both in a few weeks (ch. XLIII). His father repeats "A Cubas!" and dies four months later (ch. XLIV), and Brás quarrels with his sister Sabina and brother-in-law Cotrim over the division of the inheritance (ch. XLVI).
Virgília
Years later, Virgília returns from São Paulo married to Lobo Neves, and Brás, in a waltz, begins with her the love he had not had as a fiancé (ch. L, ch. LIII). In the middle of the affair he meets again Quincas Borba, a schoolmate reduced to a beggar, who steals his watch in an embrace (ch. LIX, ch. LX). Virgília refuses to flee (ch. LXIII, ch. LXVII), and Brás arranges a little house in Gamboa, watched over by Dona Plácida (ch. LXVII, ch. LXX). Lobo Neves is appointed provincial president and invites Brás to be his secretary, but refuses the appointment because the decree bears the date 13 (ch. LXXX, ch. LXXXIII). Virgília becomes pregnant and loses the child (ch. XC, ch. XCV). An anonymous letter denounces the lovers, and Virgília denies it before her husband (ch. XCVI). When Lobo Neves is appointed again, by a decree dated the 31st, the couple embarks, and Brás lunches as on other days (ch. CX, ch. CXV).
Nhã-loló and the Chamber
Quincas Borba, now rich by inheritance, sets out Humanitism for Brás (ch. CIX, ch. CXVII), and his sister Sabina arranges a fiancée for him, Nhã-loló, daughter of Damasceno (ch. XCIII, ch. CXX). She dies at nineteen, in the first onset of yellow fever, and Brás concludes that perhaps he did not truly love her (ch. CXXV, ch. CXXVI). As a deputy, he hears in the Chamber a speech by Lobo Neves and wants to be a minister (ch. CXXVIII, ch. CXXIX); at a ball, in 1855, he sees Virgília go down the stairs and discovers he is fifty years old (ch. CXXX, ch. CXXXIV).
The final losses
The ministry does not come, and Brás loses his seat (ch. CXXXIX, ch. CXL). He founds an opposition newspaper, which his brother-in-law publicly disowns and which dies within months (ch. CXLVIII, ch. CL). Lobo Neves dies just as he was to become minister, and Virgília mourns him sincerely (ch. CL). At her request, Brás sends Dona Plácida to the Misericordia, where she is found dead at dawn (ch. CXLII, ch. CXLIV). On the same day he sees Marcela die in the hospital and finds Eugênia in a tenement (ch. CLVIII). Quincas Borba goes mad and dies in his house, repeating that pain is an illusion (ch. CLIX). In the last chapter, Brás tallies what he did not have: he was not famous for the plaster, was not a minister, never knew marriage, and finds a small balance in the final negation: he had no children, and passed on to no one the legacy of our misery (ch. CLX).