La Peau de chagrin
Toward the end of his life, Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud felt a special connection to Balzac's novel, since he believed that his world was shrinking like Valentin's talisman. Diagnosed with a fatal tumor, Freud resolved to commit suicide. After re-reading "La Peau de chagrin", he said to his doctor: "This was the proper book for me to read; it deals with shrinking and starvation." The next day, his doctor administered a lethal dose of morphine, and Freud died.