A French influence is likewise manifest in the later English fiction. The Gothic novel had made itself felt in France as well as in Germany, a proof of which is the fact that Balzac was so impressed by Maturin's novel that he wrote a sequel to it.[44] The interrelations of the English, French, and German supernatural literature are nowhere better illustrated than in the work of Balzac. He admits Hoffmann's inspiration of his _Elixir of Life_, that horrible story of reanimation, where the head is restored to life and youth but the body remains that of an old man, dead and decaying, from which the head tears itself loose in the church and bites the abbot to the brain, shrieking out, "Idiot, tell me now if there is a God!" Balzac's influence over Bulwer-Lytton is seen in such stories as _The Haunters and the Haunted_, _or the House and the Brain_, and _A Strange Story_, in each of which the theme of supernaturally continued life is used. Balzac's _Magic Skin_ is a symbolic story of supernaturalism that suggests Hawthorne's allegoric symbolism and may have influenced it in part. It is a new application of the old theme, used often in the drama as in Gothic romance, of the pledge of a soul for earthly gratification. A magic skin gives the man his heart's desires, yet each granted wish makes the talisman shrink perceptibly, with an inexorable decrease. This theme, symbolic of the truth of life, is such a spiritual idea used allegorically as Hawthorne chose frequently and doubtless influenced Oscar Wilde's _Picture of Dorian Gray_. Balzac's _Unknown Masterpiece_ is another example of his supernaturalism that has had its suggestive effect on English ghostly fictions. [44] _Melmoth Réconcilié._ Guy de Maupassant has doubtless influenced English tales of horror more than any foreign writer since Hoffmann. As a stylist he exercised a definite and strong influence over the short-story form, condensing it, making it more economical, more like a fatal bullet that goes straight to the mark, and putting into a few hundred words a story of supernatural horror relentless in its effect. O. Henry's delicately perfect ghost story, _The Furnished Room_, is reminiscent of Maupassant's technique as seen in _The Ghost_. And surely F. Marion Crawford's _Screaming Skull_ and Ambrose Bierce's _Middle Toe of the Right Foot_ are from the same body as Maupassant's _Hand_. What a terrible corpus it must be! There is the same gruesome mystery, the same implacable horror in each story of a mutilated ghost.