The story of Brazilian Antônio José da Silva, a jewish poet, playwright and lawyer living in the 18th Century Lisbon, who managed to avoid Inquisition by converting himself to Catholicism, after being tortured. But his fierce criticism of Portugal's élite led him to persecution and torture, becoming kind of a scapegoat.
At the end of the nineteenth century, an army force led by Major Mouzinho de Albuquerque, a cavalry officer, imprisoned in Mozambique the great regulative Governor Gungunhana, who had rebelled against Portuguese government and sovereignty
A young girl, Benilde, so protected by her religious family that she seemingly knows nothing about procreation, insists that her mysterious pregnancy is a miracle; however, her distressed bourgeois family decides that Benilde has lost her mind.
A French sailor circa 1850, disembarks in a desert Atlantic island, and discovers a woman who had survived for many years her father and brother, dead while searching for mysterious valuables. The young couple discover paradise, and its end.
A fussy insurance inspector (Varela Silva) has the mission to investigate why, in three years, 325 employees have passed through a farm shop. In his police demand, he speaks with the maid, the girl Elvira (Fernanda Borsatti) and with the store's boss, Mr. Silva (Henrique Santos). His curiosity will only be satisfied with the arrival of Dona Berta (Elvira Velez), with her "nausea" daughter (Isabel de Castro) and her "unbearable" granddaughter (Guida Maria)