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However much they vaunt their sentiments with regard to the war, for these socialites so doing is just another otiose occupation, like playing cards or listening to music. The contrast between the Paris of the wealthy non-combatants and the situation experienced at the front is poignantly underlined when ‘a wretched soldier on leave’ is described looking into the windows of a packed restaurant, just as the working-class locals gazed into the restaurant at Balbec; the Narrator, reflecting on this man’s imminent return to the trenches, imagines him saying to himself ‘ “You’d never know there was a war on here” ’ (TR, 54; 2160).

The realities of the war, however, do make their way into the narrative. We hear that many of Saint-Loup’s contemporaries from Doncières perished at the battle of the Marne and elsewhere (TR, 64; 2166). Gilberte writes to the Narrator in September 1914 telling of her experience of fleeing the raids on Paris for her safety, making it back to Tansonville, only to find herself obliged to billet German troops. Robert, serving at the front, writes around the same time, voicing dislike for the clichés of nationalism but also burgeoning admiration and respect for the men around him and under his command (TR, 77; 2175). A second letter from Gilberte in 1916 shows how circumstances can change the way we perceive and recall things. In this letter, forgetting the earlier one, she claims that she originally returned to Tansonville not to escape the dangers of the raids but to save from the advancing German troops the estate that had been so dear to her father. She describes how in the ‘battle of Méséglise’ the places of their childhood became strategic sites in a key military conflict: the hawthorn path was the dividing line between French and German troops who, for over a year, each held half of Combray. The ‘deux côtés’ or two sides that shaped the Narrator’s childhood conception of time and space are absorbed into the narrative of the war and take on a new complexion.

Focus then shifts to Charlus, who the Narrator, out walking, identifies as the shadowy figure he sees following a pair of zouaves (infantrymen from Algeria) in the streets at dusk. He now bears little resemblance to the grand seigneur we first met in Balbec: shamed and ridiculed chez Verdurin in The Captive, he still suffers from a universally bad reputation. Morel publishes slanderous articles about him and Mme Verdurin seeks to discredit him any way she can, spreading rumours that (amongst other things) he is a German spy (TR, 93; 2184–5). Charlus does have Germanic origins (his mother was Duchess of Bavaria) and he happily makes his pro-German opinions known but, as the Narrator points out, this does not make him immoral, merely unpatriotic in a country where patriotism frequently spills over into blinkered jingoism.

Proust’s portraiture is a constant source of entertainment and insight throughout the Search. Mme Verdurin, readers will recall, is captured unflatteringly in The Captive, her nose greased with rhino-gomerol to protect her from the impact of Vinteuil’s music (C, 271–2; P, 1784); in Time Regained we have another rather unsavoury snapshot. Despite shortages, to calm her headaches she obtains a spurious prescription from Cottard permitting her to have croissants made for her breakfast. The first of these ‘medicinal’ pastries arrives the morning the newspapers report the sinking of the Lusitania, an ocean liner torpedoed by a German U-boat in May 1915, taking over 1,000 lives:

“How horrible!” she said … But the death of all these drowned people must have been reduced a thousand million times before it impinged upon her, for even as, with her mouth full, she made these distressful observations, the expression which spread over her face, brought there (one must suppose) by the savour of that so precious remedy against headaches, the croissant, was in fact one of satisfaction and pleasure. (TR, 102; 2190)

Whilst remaining non-judgemental, the single sentence of commentary here gives us all the detail we need to recognize the