The Last Fay

An alchemist, his family and his valet, Caliban, settle in an isolated village. After their deaths, their young son, Abel, who has read only fairy tales, falls in love with a local girl, Catherine, whom he mistakes for the legendary Pearl Fairy. But the scheming Lady Sommerset, infatuated with Abel, plans to use his delusions to her advantage... The Last Fay (1823) is one of Balzac's early works in which he tried to capitalize on the then-popular fantasy genre, and yet twist it in a new direction and use it in a novel way, more advanced in both literary and philosophical terms than the sophistications already added by generations of French writers over the past century.