A classic satire of provincial bureaucracy, which only saw the stage after the personal intervention of Tsar Nicholas I. A small, corrupt Russian town receives a letter informing them of the imminent visit of a government inspector travelling incognito. When a passing civil servant is mistaken for the inspector, panic soon sets in.

Pug, a junior demon, persuades his master Satan to let him spend a day in London. Taking over the body of a recently hanged thief, Pug becomes servant to a squire from Norfolk, Fitzdottrel, who doesn't believe that Pug is a devil but is happy that he asks no wages.