Unaware of any responsibility, any fault in the two cases in question, the narrator behaves like a casuist, like Des Grieux in Manon Lescaux. There is, however, a hint of embarrassment when the hero meets his victim in the street. This behavior interests us for two reasons: childish perversity or denial, and the hero's learning of the boundaries between inside and outside, between family and society, between what is said "at home" and what may be said elsewhere.
It's no coincidence that both scenes are set near the beginning of a book where rumor and hearsay are so important, and where the notion of "being in" or "not being in" is an essential issue. Literature is the means to play with this boundary, to raise the roof, to say to the outside what we say to the inside. This is illustrated by the scene in À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, when the narrator meets Bergotte at the Swanns' and discovers that his distinctive style has its origins in the most intimate of family languages. Bergotte's inimitable style is quite simply the voice of the family, set in tempo. The narrator is sensitive to the way these particularities have been saved from disappearing(RTP, I, 544).
Literature thus crosses the divide between the intimate and the public. Hence our digression into Canto VIII of theOdyssey. It's a scene of disquieting familiarity and revelation of the past. There are many similar scenes in La Recherche, such as the hero's gaffe in front of Norpois(RTP, I, 469), which brings the victim face to face with what is said about him in his absence. The whole beginning of "Combray" sets the scene for this interplay of inside and outside. Swann is presented to us in his absence, through what is said about him at home. The character's entrance triggers an accelerated transition in which everyone changes their behavior. There are also a number of misfires at the start of "Combray", such as the Asti wine episode. We've already mentioned the denouement of "Un amour de Swann", which plays on doubling.
The fantasy of witnessing his absence is very common in La Recherche, as in the bedtime drama and the descriptions of jealousy. Slips of the tongue, blunders and missed acts are a rare way of entering the other's world when I'm not there. All other expedients to attend his absence fail miserably in the Recherche, as shown by the episode of the lighted window in "Un amour de Swann"(RTP, I, 268-271) and that of the article in Le Figaro (RTP, IV, 148-152, 163, 169-170), or Charlus's "pavillons adverses"(RTP, III, 436).
