With his profound instinct for reality, Balzac understood that the modern life he wanted to portray was dominated by one grand fact, money, and, in La Peau de Chagrin, he had the courage to present a lover not only anxious to know if he had touched the heart of the one he loves, but also if he will have enough money to pay for the carriage in which he was bringing her home. This audacity is perhaps one of the greatest that one might permit oneself in literature, and it alone sufficed to immortalize Balzac. The consternation was profound, and the purists were indignant at this infraction of the laws of the genre; but all the young people who, going out in the evening to the home of some beautiful woman wearing white gloves ironed with gum elastic, had traversed Paris as dancers, on the tips of their shoes, fearing a spot of mud more than the crack of a pistol, commiserated, having shared these fears, like the anguishes of Valentin, who cared deeply about a hat that he could not renew and preserve despite his minute care. In moments of supreme misery, the discovery of a one hundred sou piece slid under the papers of the drawer, due to the discreet pity of Pauline, produced the effect of the most romantic theatrical strokes or of the intervention of a Peri in the Arabian tales. Who has not discovered during days of distress, forgotten in pants or in a vest, a few glorious coins appearing at just the right time and saving you from the calamity that youth fears the most: to fail to provide a beloved woman with a carriage, a bouquet, a small bench, a show program, a tip to the usherette or some trifles of this type?
Balzac excels in the portrayal of youth who are poor, as they almost always are, entering into their first struggles with life, prey to the temptation of pleasures and luxury, and experiencing profound miseries due to their high hopes. Valentin, Rastignac, Bianchon, d'Arthez, Lucien de Rubempré, Lousteau, have all sunk their beautiful teeth into the tough meat of the angry cow, fortifying food for robust stomachs, indigestible for weak stomachs; he does not lodge them, these beautiful young ones without a sou, in conventional garrets decorated with Persian rugs, with windows festooned with sweet peas and looking out on gardens; he does not have them eat "some simple dishes, prepared by the hand of nature," and does not dress them in luxurious garments, but in those that are proper and practical; he puts them in the boarding house of Mother Vauquer, or forces them to crouch under the sharp angle of a roof, he presses them into greasy tables at mean little restaurants, dressing them in black clothing with gray seams, and he is not afraid to send them to the pawn shop, if they still have, a rare occurrence, their father's watch.