"My little Albertine," I said to her in a gentle voice which was drowned in my first tears, "I could tell you that you're mistaken, that what I did this evening was nothing, but I should be lying; it's you who are right, you have realised the truth, my poor sweet, which is that six months ago, three months ago, when I was still fond of you, I should never have done such a thing. It's a mere nothing, and yet it's enormous, because of the immense change in my heart of which it is the sign. And since you have detected this change which I hoped to conceal from you, I feel impelled to say this to you: My little Albertine" "I went on in a tone of profound gentleness and melancholy), "don't you see that the life you're leading here is boring for you. It is better that we should part, and as the best partings are those that are effect most swiftly, I ask you, to cut short the great sorrow that I am bound to feel, to say good-bye to me to-night and to leave in the morning without my seeing you again, while I'm asleep."
She appeared stunned, incredulous and desolate: "Tomorrow? You really mean it?"
And in spite of the anguish that I felt in speaking of our parting as though it were already in the past - partly perhaps because of that very anguish - I began to give Albertine the most precise instructions as to certain things which she would have to do after she left the house. And passing from one request to another, I soon found myself entering into the minutest details.
"Be so kind," I said with infinite sadness, "as to send me back that book of Bergotte's which is at your aunt's. There's no hurry about it, in three days, in a week, whenever you like, but remember that I don't want to have to write and ask you for it: that would be too painful. We have been happy together, but now we feel that we should be unhappy."
"Don't say that we feel that we'd be unhappy," Albertine interrupted me, "don't say 'we,' it's only you who feel that."
"Yes, very well, you or I, as you like, for one reason or another. But it's absurdly late, you must go to bed - we've decided to part to-night."
"Excuse me, you've decided, and I obey you because I don't want to upset you."
"Very well, it's I who have decided, but that doesn't make it any less painful for me. I don't say that it will be painful for long, you know that I'm not capable of remembering things for long, but for the first few days I shall be so miserable without you. And so I feel that it's not use stirring up the memory with letters, we must end everything at once."
"Yes, you're right," she said to me with a crushed air, which was enhanced by the signs of fatigue on her features due to the lateness of the hour, "rather than have one finger chopped off and then another, I prefer to lay my head on the block at once."
Marcel Proust, The Captive, pp. 346-347
As my most excellent friend Mike Kelly might opine, "Shit just got real." Marcel and Albertine have finally decided to break up, or, more accurately, as she points out, he's decided that they're through. However, as is almost universally the case in breakups, it's essential for one side (although sometime's both sides) to make the other one so miserable that the other party will be the one who initiates the split, therefore leaving the original instigator free to claim the moral high ground and possession of community property (such as "that book of Bergotte's) and any friends in common. These breakups are never spontaneous, and instead have been played out endlessly in our heads, as can be seen by Marcel "suddenly" laying out a specific list of things she needed to do as she was leaving. We have to work out way up to these things. Breaking up is miserable. While reading this I suddenly had a flash of when things ended with the LBG. We had been talking, intermittently and sadly, about the possibility of breaking up for months (it was never the personal day to day relationship, but ghosts and family and distance) and then when it happened "spontaneously" during a conversation she then immediately told me what to do with everything that she had left at my place. And I'm not trashing her because she's a great person and nobody should be unhappy, least of all her, so if I was making her unhappy - or at least not making her as happy as she deserved - then we shouldn't have been together. Now, of course, in the case of Marcel and Albertine it's not going to be that easy, and this will drag on a while (as these things tend to). There will be more repercussions and digs. In fact, within five minutes of this decision Albertine followed up Marcel's suggestion that he send Bloch's cousin Esther to check on her by saying, "I remember, of course, that I did give this Esther my photograph because she kept on asking me for it and I saw that it would give her pleasure . . ."; knowing, of course, that it would make him jealous. And so it goes.
Finally, I was amused by this statement from Marcel: "I don't say that it will be painful for long, you know that I'm not capable of remembering things for long, but for the first few days I shall be so miserable without you . ." Yes, we never think of Proust as someone who is "capable of remembering things for long." Of course, this was before he had the petite madeleines and his quest began.
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