My Years With Proust - Day 373

Not knowing exactly what fibs she had told me, "It's quite on the cards that I contradict myself," she said.  "The sea air makes me lose my head altogether.  I'm always calling things by the wrong names." And (what proved to me that she would not, now, require many tenders affirmations to make me believe her) I felt a stab in my heart I listened to this admission of what I had but faintly imagined.  "Very well, that's settled, I'm off," she said in a tragic tone, not without looking at the time to see whether she was making herself late for the other person, now that I had provided her with an excuse for not spending the evening with myself. "It's too bad of you.  I alter all my plans to spend a nice evening with you, and it's you that won't have it, and accuse me of telling lies.  I've never known you be so cruel.  The sea shall be my tomb.  I shall never see you any more." At these words my heart missed a beat, although I was certain that she would come again next day, as she did. "I shall drown myself, I shall throw myself into the sea." "Like Sappho." "There you go, insulting me again.  You suspect not only what I say but what I do." But my lamb, I didn't mean anything, I swear to you.  You know Sappho flung herself into the sea." "Yes, yes, you have no faith in me." She saw from the clock that it was twenty minutes to the hour; she was afraid of missing her appointment, and choosing the shortest form of farewell (for which as it happened she apolgised on coming to see me again next day,m the other person presumably not being free then), she dashed from the room, crying: "Good-bye for ever," in a heartbroken tone. For, knowing what she was about at that moment better than I, at once more severe and more indulgent towards herself that I was towards her, she may after all have had a fear that I might refuse to see her again after the way in which she had left me.  And I believe that she was attached to me, so much so that the other person was more jealous than I was.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 829-830

Marcel and Albertine's evening ends, predictably, badly and dramatically.  Albertine, in high color, threatened, "The sea shall be my tomb . . . I shall drown myself, I shall throw myself into the sea."  Sometime in the hoary mists of time the threat to "throw myself into the sea" must have worked, because people still continue to use varieties of it.  Marcel's response, "Like Sappho," is about as it ever goes.  He so unimpressed he's able to dig up the appropriate lesbian themed suicide reference on the fly (unless he had thought of it earlier and was just waiting to say it: "Like Sappho." Mike drop.).  His follow-up remark, "But my lamb.  I didn't mean anything, I swear to you.  You know Sappho flung herself into the sea" only shows how unfazed her is by her threat (and reaffirms my theory that he'd been sitting on the Sappho jab).  Nevertheless, she did return the next day, so I'm guessing the water was cold.