My Year With Proust - Day 256

   The days that preceded my dinner with Mme de Stermaria, far from being delightful, were almost unbearable for me.  For as a general rule, the shorter the interval that separates us from our planned objective the longer it seems to us, because we apply to it a more minute scale of measurement, or simply because it occurs to us to measure it.  The Papacy, we are told, reckons by centuries, and indeed may perhaps not bother to reckon time at all, since its goal is in eternity.  Mine being no more than three days off, I counted by seconds, I gave myself up to those imaginings which are the adumbrations of caresses, of caresses which one itches to be able to make the woman herself reciprocate and complete - precisely those caresses, to the exclusion of all others.  And on the whole, if it is true that in general the difficulty of attaining the object of a desire enhances that desire (the difficulty, not the impossibility, for that suppresses it altogether), yet in the case of a desire that is purely physical, the certainty that it will be realised at a specific and fairly imminent point in time is not much more stirring than uncertainty; almost as much as anxious doubt, the absence of doubt makes intolerable the period of waiting for the pleasure that is bound to come, because it makes of that suspense an innumerably rehearsed accomplishment and by the frequency of our proleptic representations, divides time into sections as minute as any that could be carved by anguished uncertainty.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 397-398

Anticipation.  Marcel is waiting for his recently arranged dinner - and assignation - with Mme de Stermaria.  He's only waiting around three days, which, because it is shorter duration, and one therefore marked by a "more minute scale of measurement", as compared to the centuries or eternity that the Papacy marks time, it was an interminable wait.  And, as we all know, the wait only intensifies our desire.  Just as, to which we can once again all testify, "the difficulty of attaining the object of a desire enhances that desire. . ."  The anticipation of seeing and sleeping with Mme de Stermaria was already infringing upon his desire for Albertine while she was laying on his bed, which once again reminds us of how little of desire is actual physical; it's always about the conquest of the future or the conquest of memory or the conquest of perfection.

Note to self: use the words adumbrations and proleptic more in polite company.