In the “Scènes de la Vie Parisienne” the questions are enlarged, and existence painted in bold outlines gradually arrives at the frontiers of decrepitude. Herein purity of sentiment is exceptional: it is broken in the play of interests and scattered by the mechanism of the world. Virtue is calumniated, innocence is purchased. Passions become vices, emotions ruinous gratifications; everything is analyzed, bought, and sold. Life is a bazaar; humanity has but two forms, that of the deceiver and the deceived; it is a struggle and a combat, and the victor is he who best throttles society and moulds it to his own ends. The death of relatives is awaited; the honest man is a simpleton; generosity is a means, religion a governmental necessity, probity a policy; everything is marketable; absurdity is an advertisement, ridicule a passport, and youth, which has lived a hundred years, insults old age. These scenes close the tableaux of individual existence, and their three frameworks contain representations of youth, manhood, and old age. First the bloom of life, the expansion of the soul, and the radiance of love; then come the calculations, the transformation of affection into passion; and, lastly, the accumulation of interests and the continual satisfaction of the senses joined to the inevitable weariness of mind and body. Nothing but that which affects the individual proper has herein been treated, and the fragments of the “Scènes de la Vie Politique” express, in consequence, a wider range of thought. In these pages the actors represent the interest of the masses, and place themselves above those laws to which the types in the preceding series were subjected. The foregoing divisions described the constant antagonism of thought and sentiment, but in these scenes thought is an organizing force and sentiment is completely abolished. They are, however, incomplete, as are also the “Scènes de la Vie Militaire,” in which Balzac proposed to represent the action as taking place, not in an apartment, but on the battle-field; not in the struggle of man with man, but in the concussion of France and Europe, in the slaughter of the conquered and the pæans of the victors. After these pages, whose completion was prevented by his sudden death, the calm and peaceful pictures of the “Scènes de la Vie de Campagne” follow in orderly sequence. They represent rest after exertion, landscapes after interiors, the hush of the country after the uproar of the city, the cicatrice after the wound. This last division contains the same interests and the same struggles, but weakened now by lack of contact, like passions grown dull in solitude. It is the twilight of a busy day, a summer evening solemn with sombre shadows. It contains the purest characters and the application of the great principles of order, morality, and religion, and its actors, worn with the fatigues of the world, mingle complacently with the innocence of childhood.[14]