Doctor Josef Prokop is a man admired by women, but in his feelings for his partners he shows restraint and a certain degree of selfishness, which he hides behind his reclusiveness. He married three times and each time his marriage turned out differently than he expected. Josef has to remind himself of this again when he is preparing for the wedding of his son from his first marriage, who is marrying his third wife and his second wife is his witness. And yet he could not exist without those three different wives. Thanks to the simplicity of the first, he longed for the intellect of the second, which in turn drove him into the arms of the third with its pettiness. The novel is not only a mirror of the lives of Josef's three wives, but also reveals what this charming man admired by women really is.