Proust's Narrator is the successor to a long line of heroes in European fiction who mirror the author's sensibility and reflect his conception of reality. This mirror is different however. The central character in A la recherche du temps perdu is more akin to Flaubert's and Stendhal's characters who reflect their inner vision of the world outside them, than to the robust actors of La Comédie humaine whose physical image is inseparable from the reality they represent. The psychological analysis of Proust's fictional hero reaches into the cocoon of sensations, impressions and reflections which inform his view of himself as an artist. It is they which furnish the key to the Narrator's personality. If we wish to understand him we must look into his mirror, share the images swirling around in his imagination and unravel the process by which they form patterns which will turn into a work of artistic creation. The path down which the reader is led is the same as that which the central character himself follows without realising it. The originality of the portrait lies in the fact that the novelist he becomes at the end of A la recherche du temps perdu relives his transformation and shares it with the reader without damaging the chrysalis from which he is emerging.