Eugene Irtenev is a young landowner with a promising future—a sensible marriage, a thriving estate, a life of respectable order. Before his wedding, he ended a brief affair with Stepanida, a beautiful peasant woman. It meant nothing. It was over. Then Stepanida returns to work on his estate.
What Eugene dismissed as a youthful indulgence reawakens as an obsession that consumes his days, haunts his nights, and threatens to destroy everything he has built. He is a rational man trapped in an irrational fire. He is a husband who loves his wife—and cannot stop wanting another.
Written in 1889 but published only after Tolstoy's death, The Devil is the master's most personal and terrifying work: a story not of monsters, but of the monster that sleeps inside ordinary men. Tolstoy gave it two endings—both devastating. The question is not whether Eugene will fall, but what he will destroy when he hits the ground.
There is no escape. There is only the devil—and he is already inside the gate.