My Years With Proust - Day 628

Once, I had the illusion of seeing these unknown desires and pleasures of Albertine's, when, some time after her death, Andree came to see me.

   For the first time she seemed to me beautiful.  I said to myself that he almost frizzy hair, her dark, shadowed eyes, were doubtless what Albertine had loved so much, the materlialisation before my eyes of what she pictured in her amorous day-dreams, what she saw with the expectant eyes of desire on the day when she had so suddenly decided to leave Balbec. Like a strange, dark flower brought back to me from beyond the grave, from the innermost being of  a person in whom I had been unable to discover it, I seemed to see before me, the unlooked-for exhumation of  a priceless relic, the incarnate desire of Albertine which 'Andree was to me, as Venus was the desire of Jove.  Andree regretted Albertine's death, but I sensed at once that she did not miss her.  Forcibly removed from her friend by death, she seemed to have easily reconciled herself to a final separation which I would not have dared to ask of her while Albertine was alive, so afraid would I have been of failing to obtain her consent.  She seemed on the contrary to accept this renunciation without difficulty, but precisely at the moment when I could no longer be on any advantage to me.  Andree abandoned Albertine to me, but dead, and having lost for me not only her life but retrospectively a little of her reality, now that I saw that she was not indispensable and unique to Andree who had been able to replace her with others.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp. 556-557

So much for Marcel coming to peace with Albertine's memory.  Now he begins to press Andree for details about their relationship.  He's suspected for some time that the two women were lovers, but now he decided to find out for certain.  Instead, what he discovers is that Andree "regretted Albertine's death, but I sensed at once that she did not miss her."  This fact depresses Marcel.  Proust notes: "Andree abandoned Albertine to me, but dead, and having lost for me not only her life but retrospectively a little of her reality, now that I saw that she was not indispensable and unique to Andree who had been able to replace her with others."  As less and less people remember Albertine she fades away all the quicker.

For some reason this section reminded me of Anne Harris's brilliant and otherworldly, Self-Portrait (with Jane's Eyes), a painting that intrigues and perplexes my first year students.  It seems to me that Marcel was seeing Andree with Albertine's eyes, or maybe vice-versa.