The domineering old woman Mavra Tarasovna, the mother of the Moscow merchant Amos Panfilovich Baraboshev, is looking for a general to marry her granddaughter Poliksena. However, the girl loves Platon Zybkin, a clerk who is honest but poor and owes the master two hundred rubles. Platon faces imprisonment for debt. With the help of Poliksena’s nurse, who decides to aid the lovers, a new watchman appears in the house—former non-commissioned officer Sila Yerofeyevich Groznov, who was once Mavra Tarasovna's lover.