My Years With Proust - Day 469

   And I let the tears which my fiction rendered flow freely.

   "My poor boy, if I had only known, I should have spent the night beside you," cried Albertine, the idea that I might perhaps marry this woman, and that her chance of making a "good marriage" was thus vanishing, never even crossing her mind, so sincerely was she moved by a grief the cause of which I was able to conceal from her, but not its reality and strength. "As a matter of fact," she said to me, "last night, throughout the entire journey from la Raspeliere, I could see that you were nervous and unhappy, and I was afraid there must be something wrong." In reality my grief had begun only at Parville, and my nervous irritability, which was very different but which fortunately Albertine identified with it, arose from the tedium of having to spend a few more days in my company.  She added: "I shan't leave you any more, I'm going to spend all my time here." She was offering me, if fact - and she alone could offer me - the sole remedy for the poison that was consuming me, a remedy homogeneous with it indeed, for although one was sweet and the other bitter, both alike derived from Albertine.  At that moment Albertine - my sickness - ceasing to cause me to suffer, left me - she, Albertine the remedy - as weak as a convalescent. But I reflected that she would presently be leaving Balbec for Cherbourg, and from there going to Trieste.  Her old habits would be reviving. . . The mysterious passion with which I had once thought of Austria because it was the country from which Albertine came (her uncle had been a counsellor at the Embassy there), because I could study its geographical peculiarities, its scenery, in Albertine's smile and in her ways, as in an atlas for an album of photographs - this mysterious passion I still felt but, for an inversion of symbols, in the domain of horror.  Yes, it was from there that Albertine came.  It was there that, in every house, she could be sure of finding, if not Mlle Vinteuil's friend, others of her kind. The habits of her childhood would revive, they would be meeting in three months' time for Christmas, then for the New Year, dates which were already painful to me in themselves, owing to an unconscious memory of the misery that I had felt on those days when, long ago, they separated me, for the whole of the Christmas holidays, from Gilberte.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 1156-1157

Marcel continues to try and sort out the "mysterious passion: he feels for Albertine. I don't know if there is a sentence in Remembrance of Things Past that expresses the confusion as clearly as, "At that moment Albertine - my sickness - ceasing to cause me to suffer, left me - she, Albertine the remedy - as weak as a convalescent." He will celebrate her kindness - "the idea that I might perhaps marry this woman, and that her chance of making a 'good marriage' was thus vanishing, never even crossing her mind" - but then immediately slide back into jealousy and paranoia, "a poison that was consuming me."  It could be that her reference to Gilberte, who we haven't heard mentioned in a wile, provides valuable evidence. Marcel reflects upon the holidays (and their position at the end of the year is doubtless significant as well), "which were already painful to me in themselves, owing to an unconscious memory of the misery that I had felt on those days when, long ago, they separated me, for the whole of the Christmas holidays, from Gilberte."  In the end is Marcel just terrified at the thought of being abandoned, and the identity of the person doing the abandoning is insignificant?  That said, there does seem to be something even more powerful in his love for Albertine, his "sickness" and his "remedy", than the other women who have passed through his life.  Maybe the great love of your life is both your "sickness" and your "remedy"; I would argue that mine has been.