After the Catholic side of "Combray", it's time to examine its Jewish side. But first, we must return toMme Gaston de Caillavet's account of the "First Communion" she had read in the novel. The misunderstanding is probably about the little madeleine, the story of a mysterious, mystical experience, provoked by a flavor, reminiscent of the restless quest for the sacrament of the Eucharist. The mystery of the madeleine brings it closer to the host. The little madeleine that Alberto Beretta Anguissola calls "a little domestic eucharist" is to be compared with the blessed bread mentioned in the previous session.
The second clarification concerns the words: "(because that day I didn't go out before mass)"(RTP, I, 46). The manuscript partially explains the oddity of this "because". In the earliest versions found on a loose leaf, in Cahiers 8 and 25 of autumn 1909, and in the second typescript and the placards, the scene, whether of the cookie, the rusk or the madeleine, took place "every morning". This diversion was therefore introduced very late, when the placards were corrected: the scene no longer takes place every day of the week, but only on Sundays. And we know that the beginning of "Combray" relates the day on Sunday. The change makes the madeleine exceptional. Other corrections to the proofs allude to this visit now taking place only on Sunday mornings. The trace of the change remains in this disconcerting "because".
Third short apostille: why does Proust write "pain bénit" and "brioche bénie" (without t)? Because he follows the usage of the late 19th century. But he sometimes writes "brioche bénite" in the preface to Ruskin's Sesame and the Lilies .
On the Jewish side of "Combray", a passage has already been quoted: "My grandfather, it is true, claimed that whenever I made friends with one of my comrades more than with the others, and brought him to our house, it was always a Jew, which would not have displeased him in principle - even his friend Swann was of Jewish origin - if he had not found that it was not usually among the best that I chose him"(RTP, I, 90). This strange "même" is in fact the result of a misreading by the typographer, adapted by Proust who never goes back to the manuscript.
