The second[162] blast of the horn with which Balzac challenged admission to the Inner Sanctuaries or strongholds of the novel, _La Peau de Chagrin_, had that character of _difference_ which one notices not seldom in the first worthy works of great men of letters--the absence of the mould and the rut. _Les Chouans_ was a Waverley novel Gallicised and Balzacified; _La Peau de Chagrin_ is a cross between the supernatural romance and the novel of psychology. It is one of the greatest of Balzac's books. The idea of the skin--a new "wishing" talisman, which shrinks with every exercise of the power it gives, and so threatens extinction at once of wishing and living--is of course not wholly novel, though refreshed in detail. But then nothing is wholly novel, and if anything could be it would probably be worthless. The endless changes of the eternal substance make the law, the curse, and the blessing of life. In the working out of his theme it may possibly be objected that Balzac has not _interested_ the reader quite enough in his personages--that he seems in a way to be thinking more of the play than of the actors or the audience. His "orgie" is certainly not much of a success; few orgies in print are, except when they are burlesqued. But, on the other hand, the curiosity-shop is splendid. Yet it is not on the details of the book, important as these have been allowed to be throughout Balzac, that attention should be mainly concentrated. The point of it is the way in which the necessary atmosphere of bad dream is kept up throughout, yet with an appropriate contrast of comparatively ordinary life. A competent critic who read _Les Chouans_, knowing nothing about its author or his work, should have said, "Here is more than a promising craftsman"; reading _La Peau de Chagrin_ in the same conditions he should have said, "Here is a great, though by no means a faultless, artist." One who read both ought to have had no doubt as to the coming of something and somebody extraordinary. [Sidenote: The short stories.]