Miranda is the Portuguese merchant who owns the townhouse next to João Romão's grocery store: married to Dona Estela for her dowry, father of Zulmira, he envies his neighbor, dreams of a title, receives that of Baron of Freixal and ends up accepting the former rival as a son-in-law.
The book says that his business "was secured by the dowry she had brought, some eighty contos in buildings and public debt shares" and that he "prized, above all, his social position". When João Romão raises the tenement beneath the windows of the townhouse, Miranda tries to buy a strip of his neighbor's land and is refused. Two years later, he can no longer bear his neighbor's prosperity, and it is from this discomfort, the narrator says, that a new ideal is born in his heart: the title.
At a Sunday pagode, he appears at the window "with his commander's air, his belly thrust forward, in a white jacket, a napkin at his neck and a carving knife in his right hand like a sword", and threatens to call the police. At home he has the student Henrique, son of a farmer who is a client, and the parasite Botelho, who agrees with him against Estela and with Estela against him. The newspaper carries the news of the title of Baron of Freixal, and it is this news that keeps João Romão awake.
Once the neighbor has refashioned himself in clothes and habits, Miranda starts tipping his hat to him. On the morning after the fire, he congratulates him because everything was insured and comments on the homeless residents: "They have nothing to lose!". He goes to the theater with him, receives him for dinner, sees his townhouse rise higher than his own and confirms that Zulmira accepts him. The neighbor he envied becomes his son-in-law.