This short story is a deeply disturbing account of the human condition as seen through the eyes of Satan himself. Cynical, dark, pessimistic, and dreary, there is no warmth, only cruelty contained in these pages. Eight thousand year old Satan and narrator Theodor are the main characters. Friends Seppi and Nikolaus are secondary, along with an astrologer, and two priests, Father Adolph and Father Peter. The setting is winter, 1590, in isolated Eseldorf, Austria.

Witchcraft, superstitions, and sorcery are very much a part of this society. Satan is a fallen angel, with no empathy nor mercy. He kills with impunity, has no regrets, and harbors great distain for the human race. He disparages what he calls Moral Sense as being frivolous and uninformed. Kindness and ethics have no place in his thinking. “Man is to me as the red spider is to the elephant. The elephant has nothing against the spider—he cannot get down to that remote level; I have nothing against man. The elephant is indifferent; I am indifferent.”

This account, written so many years ago by Mark Twain, sounds chillingly prescient in light of the current political environment. "Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race—the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you.”

To an atheist, this account may not be surprising nor depressing. But to a person of faith, it is anathema. “There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream—a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought—a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"