The _Shagreen Skin_ is the adventure of a young man who, after sowing his wild oats and losing his last crown at the gaming table, goes to end his troubles in the river, but is prevented from carrying out his intention by being fortuitously presented with a piece of shagreen skin, which has the marvellous property of gratifying its possessor's every wish, yet, meanwhile, shrinks with each gratification, and in the same proportion curtails its possessor's life. On this warp of fairy tale, the author weaves a woof of romance and reality most oddly blended. The imitations of predecessors are numerous. The style is turgid, the thought is shallow, the sentiment is exaggerated. But very little of the sober characterization soon to be manifested in other books is displayed in this one. The best that can be said is that the thing has the same cleverness as the _Physiology_, with here and there indications--and clear ones--of the novelist's later power. He himself grossly overestimated it, as, indeed, he overestimated not a few of his poorer productions--maybe because they cost him greater toil than his masterpieces, which generally, after long, unconscious gestation, issued rapidly and painless from him. An amusing expression of this self-praise has come down to us in the puff he composed on the occasion of a reprint of the _Shagreen Skin_ by Gosselin in 1832. "The _Philosophic Tales_ of Monsieur de Balzac," it announced, "have appeared this week. The _Shagreen Skin_ is judged as the admirable novels of Anne Radcliffe were judged. Such things escape annalists and commentators. The eager reader lays hold of these books. They bring sleeplessness into the mansions of the rich and into the garret of the poet; they animate the village. In winter they give a livelier reflection to the sparkling log, great privileges to the story-teller. It is nature, in sooth, who creates story-tellers. Vainly are you a learned, grave writer, if you have not been born a story-teller, and you will never obtain the popularity of the _Mysteries of Udolpho_ and the _Shagreen Skin_, the _Arabian Nights_, and Monsieur de Balzac. I have somewhere read that God created Adam, the nomenclator, saying to him: You are the story-teller. And what a story-teller! What verve and wit! What indefatigable perseverance in painting everything, daring everything, branding everything! How the world is dissected by this man! What an annalist! What passion and what coolness!