The novel is a family chronicle with a sequel. The events described in the novel unfold in Paris in the 19th century. and begin with the fact that in 1815, having served in the French National Guard, Florent Bussardel, the son of a prominent customs officer who had just passed away, returned to the bosom of the family. He enters the service in the office of the stockbroker, where he quickly mastered, so that his affairs go up. He has two daughters: nine-year-old Adeline and five-year-old Julie. Soon two more twin sons are born - Ferdinand and Louis. During childbirth, his wife Lydia dies, and Florent is left alone with four children in her arms. Ramelo, a fifty-year-old neighbor who later becomes almost a member of the family, and Batistina, a village girl taken by Lydia to help during the war years, help him around the house and with children.
Adeline grows up and studies in a boarding school for noble maidens. Julie takes care of the brothers. Once, once, playing with them Indians, she sets up a small fire in the apartment. Batistina, not figuring out who is to blame, brutally thrashing the twins. Subconsciously, she cannot forgive them for the death of their mother, to whom she was very attached. She's getting fired.
The companion of Florent Bussardel, stealing on military supplies, is sent to prison, and Bussardel buys his share in the office and becomes its sovereign master.
In 1826, the question arises of the marriage of Adeline. Her father finds a party for her in the person of Felix Mignon, the son of one of the shareholders of a company engaged in the resale of land in Paris. Adeline, with her prudish speeches, scares away a young man, and he passionately falls in love with a lively and charming Julie, who is not yet sixteen. Florent Bussardel agrees to marry his youngest daughter, and Adeline remains an old maid, explaining this to the fact that the twins need someone who would replace their mother and take care of them.
Meanwhile, the office of the stockbroker Bussardel becomes one of the first in Paris, his business is in full swing and there is a need to buy a property where the broker could invite friends to hunt. In 1832, Bussardelle acquired the Grancy estate, where the whole family left during the raging cholera that raged in Paris that same year. Ferdinand Bussardelle, who had turned into a temperamental sixteen-year-old boy by that time, was seducing the young Clemence Blondo dishwasher in Grancy. This is his first experience in the love field, and it costs a lot to the girl: due to the operation to prevent pregnancy, she subsequently becomes unable to have children and even dies of cancer in her youth. From his connection with Clemence Ferdinand makes only the first acquaintance with such pleasures and the desire to know them again. He spent his entire youth in the Latin Quarter in the company of grisettes, in contrast to his breastplate Louis, a chaste and timid young man. By the age of twenty, a change is taking place in Ferdinand. He was bored with his monotonous pleasures, and he decides to marry in order to acquire the status of a serious married man and become a worthy successor to his father. On the advice of loved ones, his choice falls on Theodorina Bizu, the daughter of the owner of a spinning mill, originally from Savoy. Four months after the family council, Theodorin became Ferdinand's wife and so far the only Madame Bussardel. Soon, Louis will marry. The day after his wedding, Ramelo dies, she is buried in the family crypt of the Bussardelleys, where her favorite Lydia still lay alone. Before she died, she could never forgive them for the death of their mother, to whom she was very attached. Before her death, she forgives Florent Bussardel for the fact that when the birth of the twins threatened Lydia with death, Bussardel preferred that the children survived, and not their mother.
Florent Bussardel acquired the Villetta mansion for his son, and now Ferdinand lives there with his wife, who, having married, immediately becomes a mother and soon gives hope that the child will not be the only one. Her first son, Victorin, given to the nurse for a year in the village, along with his milk brother gets sick with croup, from which the latter dies.
Florent Bussardel, while not sharing his plans with anyone, is buying up the lands of the village of Monceau, which, by permission of the king, is now attached to Paris. As a result, a year and a half after the beginning of his activity, Bussardel becomes the owner of all the plots that he looked at, and only then decides to open his sons, who completely approved him.
In 1845, during the uprising in Paris, Ferdinand and Louis served in the National Guard. The whole family: Florent Bussardel, Theodorina with three sons and a daughter, as well as Laura, wife Louis, with children - go to Terraza, one of the sites in the village of Monceau, where Bussardel ordered a peasant house to be equipped for temporary residence of his family. After the establishment of the Republic, the family returns to Paris, where Ferdinand and Louis, who survived the shootings, are already waiting for them.
Years pass, filled in the family of Ferdinand Bussardel with worries about Victorin, which gives parents a lot of anxiety because of their nature. His two brothers and three sisters have much better inclinations. The second son in the family, Edgar, is silent and judicious, weak in health and very much like a mother. The youngest, Amory, a poured father, already in his early years shows extraordinary ability in drawing. In 1854, Florent Bussardel goes to the estate of his old friend Albara for the summer. At the end of summer, Ferdinand also goes there together with Victoren and Amory. Victorin is unusually noisy and restless, but still distinguished by dullness, laziness and an evil character. Ferdinand is trying to apply a new education system to his son and provides this difficult-to-educate teenager with the most pleasant living conditions, as if he were an exemplary boy, but Viktoren has more girdles and his father has no choice but to put his son in a special educational institution in Javel for hard-to-educate children teenagers, where he remains until his marriage under the tutelage of a strict overseer.
The old Florent suddenly dies, having not had time to tell Ferdinand about the secret of his birth and about his mother, Lydia. The plots acquired by the old man are rapidly growing in price, grandiose construction begins on them, the condition of the Bussardelles increases every day. In Monceau, near the park, Bussardelles and themselves build luxurious mansions.
At twenty-two and a half years, having sat in almost every class twice, Victorin gets a certificate of maturity, and his parents marry him to Amelie, daughter of the Count and Countess Clapier. The honeymoon begins on the Mediterranean coast in the city of Giera, where Edgar, brother of Victorin, is treated for chest disease, and there, according to the mutual desire of the newlyweds, it ends. Amelie, making friends with Edgar, tells him about her life and the circumstances of her marriage: she was brought up for a long time in the monastery, and when the time came for her parents to take her away from there, they expressed a desire for Amelie to become a nun, because of the unsuccessful transactions of her brother's family she was left without a significant part of her fortune and was not able to give her daughter a proper dowry. However, after the scandal that broke out due to the violence of the parents over the daughter, which many of their friends learned about, Clapier was forced to pick up her daughter from the monastery and find a party for her, but not give a dowry. That is why Amelie agreed to marry Victorenne; she would have gone for anyone to escape from the hypocritical and oppressive custody of the family. The first child is born to Amelie only a few years after marriage, and then after a long treatment, which became necessary due to the mistreatment of her by Victorin in the very first days after their wedding. Amelie’s relationship with her father-in-law is very warm. Soon, despite his young age, Amelie becomes a real "mother" of the entire Bussardelle family. In 1870, when unrest began in Paris, she took all the offspring of Ferdinand and Louis Bussardely to Grancy, where she made every effort so that her relatives did not know anything. Theodorina dies the same year. After returning to Paris, Amelie gives birth to a third child. In her nanny, she takes Aglaya, the wife of Dubot, the servant of Victorin, who, with her exceptional devotion, gains Amelie's affection. However, after Victoren forces Aglaya to become his mistress and Amelie finds out about this, she is fired and driven out of the house. Amelie, whose dignity is deeply hurt, decides to divorce her husband, because after the death of her aunt, who left her a significant inheritance, she may not depend materially on Victoren. For starters, she leaves for Grancy. Only the active intervention of Ferdinand allows us to avoid divorce and the inevitable scandal associated with it and shame for the whole family.
After some time, Aunt Victorina, Adeline’s elder sister, Ferdinand, gets sick. Caring for her Amelie, she tells the secret about her husband. Adedina claims that Viktorenn is not the son of Ferdinand, since the child of Theodorina and Ferdinand died in infancy from croup, and Victorenn is none other than the son of the nurse, whom she replaced with fear the offspring of the Bussardelles. Amelie sets off on the outskirts and finds confirmation in Adeline’s words, but doesn’t inform anyone about this, not wanting to harm her children. Amelin, who begins to spread rumors further, Amelie puts in an expensive institution for the mentally ill, where after a few years she dies of old age. Amelie understands the reasons for the behavior and appearance of her husband, which are so unusual for the Bussardelles. From now on, her main occupation is the care that Viktoren not too shame on his name outside the house. She again writes out Dubot's wife to Paris, and when she enters a respectable age, she entrusts her with the search for accommodating maids for her husband. After the death of Ferdinand Bussardel, Amelie takes the reins of the family and takes care of it with the warmth and love that attract the whole younger generation and contribute to the prosperity of the family. By that time, both Louis and Julie Bussardel had gone to the grave. A little later, Amelie marries her sons in their "cousins", thus planting her offspring on the main genealogical trunk of the tree. In 1902, she already had four grandchildren. Victoren dies the next time he visits a brothel, and Aglaya helps Amelie hide this shameful fact from her relatives. The crypt of the Bussardelles is replenished with another deceased, and the family, which has grown greatly, continues to flourish in prosperity and universal respect.
