Just a story about a monk, till Father Sergius does something really dreadful

Tolstoy's Father Sergius is a strange story, for him, for anyone - I'm about half-way through the 40-pager in the Pevear-Volokhonsky "The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories," so not sure what to make of it in its entirety (obviously) starts off with a really gripping first paragraph stating bluntly, in almost a newspaper lede, that a promising military officer left his beautiful fiancee two days before their marriage and took vows as a monk. Who would do this, why? We then follow in typically Tolstoyan clear and economical fashion the life story of the man who became the monk, Father Sergius. We learn fairly quickly that he left his fiancee when she confessed to him that she had been the mistress of the emperor - he abruptly leaves and heads for a monastery. Seems to be a Russian version of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, a seemingly kind and thoughtful man taking drastic and immediate action when he learns his fiancee has a difficult past. What's with these guys? A wound to their pride reveals a mean and hysterical streak - though in this case it wasn't a hidden streak, Sergius (I can't remember his birth name) had the one fault of a violent temper. The story then meanders for a while - how interesting is the life of a monk in a cave? - until a group of wealthy revelers take a bet and one of the women shows up unannounced at Serguis's cave. Will she seduce him? Now, we're in the world of the one-act play it seems. (Spoiler here): Tormented, Sergius then does something truly bizarre: he chops off his own finger! This guy is even stranger than we'd imagined. We'll see where Tolstoy goes with this story, but it does seem to be saying something about Tolstoy's own self-loathing, his desire to be a holy and spiritual man and the torment he must have felt about his own sexual drive.