La Peau de chagrin
In his Preface to the novel's first edition, Balzac meditates on the usefulness of fantastic elements: "[Writers] invent the true, by analogy, or they "see" the object to be described, whether the object comes to them or they go toward the object ... Have men the power to bring the universe into their brain, or is their brain a talisman with which they abolish the laws of time and space?" Critics agree that Balzac's goal in "La Peau de chagrin" was the former.