Page "La Peau de chagrin" Paragraph 11

The title La Peau de chagrin first appeared in print on 9 December 1830, as a passing mention in an article Balzac wrote for La Caricature under the pseudonym Alfred Coudreux.

His scrapbook includes the following note, probably written at the same time: " L ' invention d ' une peau qui représente la vie.

Conte oriental.

" (" The invention of a skin that represents life.

Oriental story.

") One week later, he published a story fragment called " Le Dernier Napoléon " in La Caricature, under the name " Henri B ...".

In it, a young man loses his last Napoleon coin at a Parisian gambling house, then continues to the Pont Royal to drown himself.

During this early stage, Balzac did not think much of the project.

He referred to it as " a piece of thorough nonsense in the literary sense, but in which author has sought to introduce certain of the situations in this hard life through which men of genius have passed before achieving anything ".

Before long, though, his opinion of the story improved.