This film is an adaptation of one of Maria Rodziewiczówna’s best-known novels of manners. This seven-episode series tells a story about love, honour and family, intertwined with the lives of people from lower and higher social classes whose lives changed after the January Uprising. Marek Czertwan is faced with a new duty imposed on him by his dying father – he has to take additional care of the estate left by his father’s lost friend, insurgent magnate Kazimierz Orwid. How will Marek cope with the new situation? Will he succumb to the charms of Irena, the rightful heir to the manor? The ideals of the characters are put to a difficult test, and their desires come into conflict with the duties imposed by their family. Dewajtis, a primeval oak tree, casts its soothing shadow over the heads of those who in its shade are looking for an escape from the hardships of everyday life. The tree becomes a majestic symbol of this intergenerational community.