After losing his last gold coin in a desperate wager, Raphael de Valentin leaves the gambling house in the Palais-Royal intent on committing unseemly suicide by drowning himself in the Seine. Along the way, however, he is distracted by the allure of an antique shop. The owner of this old curiosity shop shows Raphael an unimagined treasure: a piece of shagreen (untanned leather) with the power of granting its owner’s every craving. And yet, as the shopkeeper warns his young customer, each wish granted will shrink the shagreen and diminish the days of its possessor. But Raphael is reckless: “I want to live to excess!” he exclaims as he grasps the skin. Thus the scene is set for one of Balzac’s most telling philosophical explorations. In the foreground is the realism of the author’s vivid descriptions of gambling den and curio shop (and subsequent episodes of equally astute observation). In the background is the overriding riddle posed by the supernatural skin and the reflections of the antiquary who proffers it: Do our desires use us up? Moving backward and forward in time, Balzac follows Raphael’s fate through a dynamic panorama of contemporary society, illuminating, through the compulsions of a deliciously melodramatic plot, the metaphysical conundrums that thwart and thrill our souls.