Honoré de Balzac, the father of the realist novel, could not resist the attraction of the fantastic and at various stages of his life the author of The Human Comedy paid tribute to the genre of mystery and the supernatural. Under the title Melmoth Reconciled - Balzac's homage to Ch. R. Mathurin, author of the consecration and summit of the gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer - are collected The Unknown Masterpiece - with the theme of painting as the axis of the fantastic, - The Elixir of Long Life -, a new version of the story of Don Juan and his hells, - The Red Inn and - Jesus Christ in Flanders -, two more examples of the visionary Balzac. Biography of the author: Honoré de Balzac was born on 20 May 1799 in Tours (France). He studied at the College of Vendôme and, later, law at the Sorbonne at his father's request. He subsequently worked as a notary's clerk, but left despite his father's opposition to devote himself to writing. From 1821 he worked with Auguste Lepoitevin in the latter's workshop for piece-rate writers, where, under various pseudonyms, he began to write commercial novels. Between 1822 and 1829 he lived in absolute poverty while writing tragic plays and melodramatic novels that were barely successful. In 1825 he tried his luck as a publisher and printer, but was forced to leave in 1828 on the verge of bankruptcy and in debt for the rest of his life. In 1829 he wrote the novel 'Les Chouans', the first to bear his name, based on the life of Breton peasants and their role in the royalist insurrection of 1799, during the French Revolution. A tireless worker, he produced some 95 novels and numerous short stories, plays and newspaper articles over the next 20 years. In 1832 he maintained contact through letters with a Polish countess, Eveline Hanska, who promised to marry him after her husband's death. Her husband died in 1841, but they were not married until March 1850. In 1834 he conceived the idea of ​​merging all his novels into a single work, The Human Comedy, which was intended to give a portrait of French society in all its aspects, from the Revolution to his own time. At first he wanted to call it Studies in the Customs of the Nineteenth Century, a social correlate of what Buffon had attempted in his Studies on Nature. In an introduction written in 1842, he explained the philosophy of the work, which reflected some of the views of the naturalist writers Jean Baptiste de Lamarck and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. The work would include 150 novels, divided into three main groups: `Studies of Customs`, `Philosophical Studies` and `Analytical Studies`. Among the best-known novels in the series are `Papa Goriot` (1834), `Eugénie Grandet` (1833), `Cousin Bette` (1846), `The Quest for the Absolute` (1834) and `Lost Illusions` (1837-1843). Among his many works, in addition to those already mentioned, the following stand out: The Skin of Shale (1831), The Lily of the Valley (1835-1836), César Birotteau (1837), The Splendour and Misery of the Courtesans (1837-1843) and The Priest of Tours (1839), Libertine Tales (1832-1837), the play Vautrin (1839), and his famous Letters to the Stranger, which collect the long correspondence that he maintained since 1832 with Eveline Hanska. In April 1845 he was awarded the Legion of Honour. Honoré de Balzac died on 18 August 1850. He was buried in the Pére Lachaise cemetery, where Victor Hugo gave the funeral oration.