The head of a plumbing and electrical workshop is a victim of bureaucracy in public offices and is unable to pay his debts, so his workshop is closed. With a lot of luck he manages to get a repair job in the house of a minister, then he enters to work in a ministry, also becoming a bureaucrat. Taking advantage of his friendship with the minister, he is promoted to become chief archivist, but he realizes the routine that is filling the job and resigns.
Baltasar, a young man in his twenties, is sent by his father to live with his aunt Dolores, an elderly widow and childless widow, on the Las Pataguas farm. There he meets his neighbors, the Araneda family, owners of the El Pantano farm and parents of the beautiful Humilde, with whom Balthazar falls in love. But the girl is "bewitched" by Saúl Araneda, her seductive cousin, whom the locals consider dangerously jealous.
