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" Peau de Chagrin," disappear with the gratification of 

 a last wish. Balzac's studies had led him over a wide 

 range of thought and speculation, and his shadowing 

 forth of physiological truth in this strange story may 

 have been intentional. At any rate, the matter of life is 

 a veritable " Peau de Chagrin," and for every vital act it 

 is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and 

 the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the 

 waste of protoplasm. Every word uttered by a speaker 

 costs him some physical loss j and, in the strictest sense, 

 he burns that others may have light so much elo- 

 quence, so much of his body resolved into caibonic acid, 

 water and urea. It is clear that this process of expendi- 

 ture cannot go on forever. But, happily, the protoplasmic 

 peau de chagrin differs from Balzac's in its capacity of 

 being repaired, and brought back to its full size, after 

 every exertion. For example, this present lecture, what- 

 ever its intellectual worth to you, has a certain physical 

 value to me, which is, conceivably, expressible by the 

 number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily sub- 

 stance wasted in maintaining my vital processes during 

 its delivery. My peau de chagrin will be distinctly 

 smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the 

 beginning. By-and-by, I shall probably have recourse 

 to the substance commonly called mutton, for the pur- 

 pose of stretching it back to its original size. Now this 

 mutton was once the living protoplasm, more or less mod- 

 ified, of another animal a sheep. As I shall eat it, it 

 is the same matter altered, not only by death, but by ex- 

 posure to sundry artificial operations in the process of 

 cooking. But these changes, whatever be their extent, 



