The revision of the novel for book publication started before the conclusion of its serialization. Many excisions were made, eliminating secondary characters and episodes that were melodramatic, or unimportant to the construction of the plot. Machado de Assis also added a few, but important, paragraphs and chapters, and reordered some events. This chapter shows that the reordering of the first twenty chapters, the elimination of secondary material, and the small additions made gave prominence to a single main character, Rubião, and to his progressive madness.