Summoned to the country estate of his uncle Colonel Yegor Rostanev, the young Sergey Aleksandrovich finds himself thrown into a bedlam. His kind-hearted uncle is dominated by a pretentious and despotic pseudo-intellectual named Opiskin, a charlatan who has ingratiated himself with Yegor's mother and now holds the entire household under his thumb. Watching the absurd theatrics of this domestic tyrant over forty-eight explosive hours, Sergey grows increasingly furious. His bungling attempts to assert himself, however, are as ineffectual as they are comedic.