Within a Budding Grove post V

Proust really proves that it is a small world and despite moving his location to Balbec he continues to come across people that not only know his family but also Combray and the Swanns.

Bullet points between pages 782 - 876

* The narrator and his grandmother become friendly with Mme de Villeparisis, a well to do lady who takes a liking to them both and takes them out in her carriage she also introduces her nephew Saint-Loup to the narrator and the two become friends

* Bloch, who is mentioned throughout Vol I and Vol II reappears and because of the narrators friendship with the aristocratic Saint-Loup shows his illbreeding and jealously and acts sometimes in a most unusual almost insulting manner

* Saint-Loup’s uncle turns up and is a Guermantes who lives near Combray. Unless my memory is growing weak his other name Baron de Charlus is the same as the man who Madame Swann was having an affair with when they lived in Combray? Sure enough the narrator asks if she was his mistress but the nephew denies it

* The Uncle invites them to tea but seems to have forgotten to tell anyone else about it so there is an embarrassing moment that when the narrator reminds him of the invitation he blanks him not once but twice and then only talks to the grandmother

* Saint-Loup and the narrator get invited round to Bloch's home for a meal which is full of well intentioned boasting by the father but Bloch upsets things by being rude about Saint-Loup's uncle and Gilberte

* As the holiday season draws to a close there are some beautiful descriptions of the changing light and the darkness that arrives earlier at night

* The narrator keeps seeing women who he takes a fancy to and sets his sights on a group of girls and after hearing one of them mention the name Simonet discovers they are staying in the same hotel