Vasco is a medical student in Lisbon, supported by his rich aunts, whom he had falsely told he had already graduated. In fact, he devotes himself to a bohemian life, preferring the popular fairs and pretty women, especially Alice, a seamstress from the Castelinhos quarter, which rather upsets her ambitious father, tailor Caetano, who is familiar with Vasco's debts. After failing yet another final exam, he is surprised by his aunts' announcement that they will visit him in Lisbon to see his practice.

Gracinda is a young laundress who works with Uncle Jacinto, but life hasn't been going well for them. Therefore, she decides to go to the city to convince Chico, her cousin with whom she has fallen in love, to return to the village to help on the business...

A Portuguese bourgeois dares to look at a Spanish lady's delicate ankles at the beach, but his wife will have nothing of it. Later, it's him that forbids his daughter from seeing a young man she had met at the same beach.

After losing her father in the sea, Rosa is lodged in the house of the lighthouse keeper João Vidal. António Gaspar, also a lighthouse keeper, loves Rosa. His jealousy of João Vidal will provoke the death of Rosa, an act that the mother of António will help to cover up.

João, a music teacher, tells his students the story of how twenty years earlier he fell in love with Anustchka, a circus performer, whom he left everything for.