My Years With Proust - Day 472

   "Ah! that wouldn't be possible just at present," Albertine replied.  "Besides, why should you need to go back to Paris so soon, if the lady has gone?"

   "Because I shall feel calmer in a place where I knew her than at Balbec, which she has never seen and which I've begun to loathe."

   Did Albertine realise later on that this other woman had never existed, and that if, that night, I had really longed for death, it was because she had thoughtlessly revealed to me that she had been on intimate terms with Mlle Vinteuil's friend?  It is possible.  There are moment when it appears to me probable.  At any rate, that morning, she believed in the existence of the other woman.

   "But you ought to marry this lady," she said to me, "it would make you happy, my sweet, and I'm sure it would make her happy as well."

   I replied that the thought that I might make this woman happy had almost made me decide to marry her; when, not long since, I had inherited a fortune which would enable me to provide my wife with ample luxury and pleasures, I had been on the point of accepting the sacrifice of the woman I loved. . . . I was not guilty of the impudence (if such it was) that I should have committed in Gilberte's time, of telling her that it was she, Albertine, whom I loved.

  "You see, I came very near to marrying her. But I didn't date do it, after all, for I wouldn't have wanted to make a young woman live with anyone so sickly and troublesome as myself."

   "But you must be mad.  Anybody would be delighted to live with you, just look how people run after you.  They're always talking about you at Mme Verdruin's, and in high society too, I'm told.  She can't have been at all nice to you, that lady, to make you lose confidence like that.  I can see what she is, she's a sicked woman, I detest her.  Ah, if I were in her shoes!"

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 1160-1161

Proust assures us that, "At any rate, that morning, she believed in the existence of the other woman."  That is, that the fictitious woman that Marcel had created as part of his attempted clumsy deception of Albertine had completely taken in the young woman.  However, I'm just not buying it.  Clearly, Albertine can see through Marcel's childish attempts at subterfuge.  This whole scene feels like an unholy mixture of Jane Austen and David Mamet, where you're not quite certain who is messing with whom.  When Albertine says, "She can't have been at all nice to you, that lady, to make you lose confidence like that.  I can see what she is, she's a sicked woman, I detest her.  Ah, if I were in her shoes!" I'm convinced that she messing with Marcel.  Now, is she just drawing him closer so that she can finally, officially snare him because she truly loves him or is she just messing with him and giving him a little of his own medicine?