The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
The events in the order the book tells them.
The end in 1869: the plaster and the delirium
- Chapters I to IX1
The Author's Death
Brás Cubas dies on a Friday in August 1869, at sixty-four, unmarried and rich, and decides to write his memoirs from the other world, beginning at the end: eleven friends carry him to the cemetery.
- Chapters I to IX2
The Plaster
Brás blames his death on a fixed idea, the anti-hypochondriac plaster that would cure the melancholy of humanity. The motive he confesses, now a dead man, is to see his own name printed everywhere.
- Chapters I to IX3
The Delirium
Sick, after Virgília's visit, Brás raves: a hippopotamus carries him to the origin of the centuries, where Nature, who also calls herself Pandora, mother and enemy, denies him more years and shows him the parade of the centuries.
Childhood, Marcela, and Coimbra
- Chapters X to XVI4
The Boy Who Rode Prudêncio
Pampered by his father, Brás grows up a little devil: at six he smashes the head of an enslaved woman who denied him coconut sweets, and makes the house boy, Prudêncio, his horse.
- Chapters X to XVI5
The 1814 Dinner
At nine, at a dinner the family gives in Rio to celebrate Napoleon's fall, Brás waits in vain for dessert, sees Dr. Vilaça kiss Dona Eusébia at the country house, and shouts the news.
- Chapters X to XVI6
The First Kiss
At seventeen, on the night of the independence lanterns, Brás sees the Spanish woman Marcela and follows her. Three days later, at a supper at her house, he returns to the staircase on the pretext of a handkerchief and kisses her.
- Chapters XVII to XXIV7
Shipped Off by Force
The father, who paid off the debts run up with Marcela, sends his son to Europe. Brás is bundled into a chaise, taken to the police superintendent, and put aboard a merchant ship bound for Lisbon, downcast and mute.
- Chapters XVII to XXIV8
The Degree from Coimbra
During the voyage, Brás trades Marcela for the ambition of office and fame. In Coimbra he studies mediocrely, earns a reputation as a party-goer, and receives his bachelor's degree, leaving there wanting to wield influence, enjoy, and live.
- Chapters XVII to XXIV9
His Mother's Death
Summoned by his father, Brás returns to Rio and finds his mother nearly a skeleton, devoured by stomach cancer. Without weeping, he watches the long agony, the first death he sees up close.
Tijuca, Eugênia, and the Lost Fiancée
- Chapters XXV to XXXVII10
The Candidacy and the Fiancée
In Tijuca, where he withdrew after mourning, Brás hears from his father two plans: a seat as deputy and marriage to Virgília, daughter of Councilor Dutra. He agrees to consider both, provided he is not obliged to accept both.
- Chapters XXV to XXXVII11
Eugênia, the Lame Girl
Brás meets Eugênia, Dona Eusébia's daughter, pretty and lame from birth, and receives from her his first kiss. Eight days later, out of pity and for fear of coming to love a lame woman, he comes down the mountain and abandons her.
- Chapters XXXVIII to XLIX12
Marquise, Because I Shall Be a Marquis
In a few weeks, Lobo Neves takes from Brás both the fiancée and the candidacy. Virgília asks him whether he will be a minister and whether he will make her a baroness, and he answers that he will make her a marquise. Brás gives way, on her father's advice.
Virgília and the Little House in Gamboa
- Chapters L to LXIII13
The Waltz
Years later, Virgília returns from São Paulo married to Lobo Neves. Brás meets her again and waltzes with her at a ball; weeks later, at a gathering in her husband's house, he squeezes her hand hard during the waltz, and she lets her hand stay.
- Chapters L to LXIII14
Quincas Borba's Embrace
At the Passeio Público, Brás meets his old schoolmate Quincas Borba, who had once been rich and is now a beggar. He gives him five milreis, and Quincas, in a parting embrace, steals his watch.
- Chapters L to LXIII15
The Proposal to Flee
Brás proposes to Virgília that they flee to somewhere where no one would bother them. She turns pale and fears her husband will kill her; Lobo Neves arrives, kisses his son, and Brás, invited to dinner, drinks more than usual.
- Chapters LXIV to LXXVI16
The Little House
Virgília refuses to flee, because she does not separate love from public regard. Brás then arranges a little house on a street in Gamboa, to be kept by a former seamstress and hanger-on of her family.
- Chapters LXIV to LXXVI17
The Whip
Walking back through Valongo, Brás sees a man whipping another in the square: it is Prudêncio, the boy his father freed. Prudêncio asks for his blessing and passes on to another the blows he received when he was Brás's mount.
- Chapters LXIV to LXXVI18
Dona Plácida's Story
Dona Plácida, who keeps the little house, tells Brás her life: the natural daughter of a sacristan, widowed by a tailor, she supported her daughter and her mother with sweets and sewing, and fears ending up begging.
- Chapters LXXVII to LXXXVII19
The Decree of the 13th
Brás reads in the newspaper that decrees dated the 13th name him secretary and Lobo Neves provincial president. Virgília tells him her husband will refuse out of superstition: the number 13 is linked to the deaths of his parents.
- Chapters LXXVII to LXXXVII20
The Summit
Saved from separation, Brás and Virgília love each other with more ardor. Brás says this was the highest point of the affair, the mountain's summit, from which they began to descend.
- Chapters LXXXVIII to C21
The Anonymous Letter
After losing the child they were expecting, Virgília and Brás suffer the blow of an anonymous letter denouncing the two of them to Lobo Neves. Virgília calls it slander before her husband, gets herself out of it, and tells Brás everything in Gamboa.
- Chapters CI to CXVI22
Lunch
When Virgília leaves with her husband for the province, Brás does not see them board. He feels relief and longing in equal measure and lunches as on other days: the novelistic thing would be to suffer, the biographical fact is that he had lunch.
Humanitism, Nhã-loló, and the Chamber
- Chapters CXVII to CXXXVI23
Humanitism
Quincas Borba, now a rich heir, sets out Humanitism for Brás: Humanitas is the man divided among all men, war, hunger, and crime are necessary functions, and pain is an illusion.
- Chapters CXVII to CXXXVI24
Nhã-loló's Death
Nhã-loló, a fiancée chosen by Brás's sister, dies at nineteen in the first onset of yellow fever. Brás accompanies her to the tomb without tears and concludes that perhaps he did not truly love her.
- Chapters CXVII to CXXXVI25
Fifty Years
At a ball in 1855, Brás speaks to Virgília for the first time since the provincial presidency and sees her go down the stairs. On his way back, he discovers at the bottom of the carriage that he is fifty years old: the best part of his life went down the stairs with her.
The Final Losses and the Negations
- Chapters CXXXVII to CLX26
How I Did Not Become Minister
The ambition to become minister, which led Brás to speak about the barretina of the National Guard, ends with the loss of his deputy's seat. The chapter that promises to tell how he did not become minister is made up only of dots.
- Chapters CXXXVII to CLX27
Dona Plácida's Death
Virgília asks in a letter that Brás take Dona Plácida, very sick, to the Misericordia. He, who had given her five contos, sends her out of courtesy to the hospital, where she is found dead at dawn.
- Chapters CXXXVII to CLX28
Two Encounters
On one day, during the years he serves in a Third Order, Brás finds Eugênia in a tenement, lame and sadder, and sees Marcela die in the Order's hospital.
- Chapters CXXXVII to CLX29
Quincas Borba's Death
Quincas Borba returns from Minas demented and aware of it, burns the manuscript in order to perfect Humanitism, and dies in Brás's house, repeating that pain is an illusion.
- Chapters CXXXVII to CLX30
Of Negations
Brás takes stock: he was not famous for the plaster, was not minister, did not know marriage. In the small balance is the last negation: he had no children and passed on to no one the legacy of our misery.