Once one thinks in terms of the man on the one hand, and his writings on the other, one is surprise, even, I think, puzzled and disconcerted, by the disparity, the apparent disparity at any rate, between, on the one hand, the frequenter of the Faubourg Saint Germain salons, and, on the other, the author of À la Recherche, between the rather eccentric hypochondriac and the observer in the novel of human weakness, erm between perhaps the often precious and whimsical Figaro columnist and the architect of an astonishingly complex and lengthy novel, amounting to something like one and a quarter million words.