Honoré de Balzac’s The Elixir of Life plunges readers into a richly Gothic world where ambition and mortality collide in a tale as seductive as it is sinister. Part of La Comédie Humaine, this novella draws on the legend of the Wandering Jew and the alchemical pursuit of eternal life to explore the moral and existential dilemmas of human greed.

The light was obscure, conveying an impression of gathering storm, late winter evening, and slight cold rain. On this bleak stage at first no actor was visible. Then, in the distance, a bobbing black object appeared; a moment more, and it was a man running, jumping, clambering over the groynes, and every few seconds looking eagerly back.

They seemed to belong to another age, an age when things spiritual were indeed to be feared, an age when omens and witches were credible, and ghosts beyond denying. Their very existence, thought I, is spectral; the cut of their clothing, the ornaments and conveniences in the room about them even are ghostly—the thoughts of vanished men, which still haunt rather than participate in the world of to-day.