Occupying some 600 pages, the third volume of A la recherche du temps perdu is the longest of the series. Opting to avoid what might have been a volume of unwieldy bulk, Proust decided to publish it in two nearly equal parts – Le Côté de Guermantes I, which appeared in 1920, and Le Côté de Guermantes II, which appeared in 1921. The practically motivated two-part division is not lacking in thematic and narrative symmetries, however. Each volume contains one very large social scene around which the remainder of the story gravitates: in Guermantes I, one day of action (R II, 451–594; S 3, 149–294) centers on the salon of Mme de Villeparisis, who had made her first appearance in Balbec in the previous volume; and in Guermantes II, more than 120 pages are devoted to a single dinner party hosted by the Duc and Duchesse de Guermantes (R II, 709–834; S 3, 414–546). In narrative terms, the principal effect of these scenes is to slow things down considerably, creating in the reader the impression that time has been frozen. Whereas in the compact novella Un Amour de Swann a number of years were compressed into 200 pages, here a single scene expands to more than half of that length.