"The possession of power, no matter how enormous, does not bring the knowledge how to use it." Raphael, a failed writer, finds himself deep in debt and unrequited in love, so he decides to take a suicidal plunge into the Seine River. Before he can, however, he discovers a magic leather skin in an antiquity shop. Its supernatural powers grant him his every wish, but it extracts a terrible toll! This parable depicts the malaise of nineteenth-century France.