My Years With Proust - Day 633

   Certainly, on fine days, Paris seemed to me innumerably aflower with all the girls, not whom I desired, but who thrust down their roots into the obscurity of the desire and the unknown nocturnal life of Albertine.  It was of one such that she had said to me at the outset, when she had not yet begun to be wary of me: "She's ravishing, that girl.  What pretty hair she has!" All that I had wanted to know about her life in the past when I knew her only by sight, and at the same time all my desires in life, merged into this one sole curiosity, to know in what manner Albertine experienced pleasure, to see her with other women, perhaps because thus, when they had left her, I should have remained alone with her, the last and the master. And seeing her hesitations as to whether it would be worth her while to spend the evening with this or that girl, her satiety when the other had gone, perhaps her disappointment, I should have elucidated, I should have restored to its true proportions, the jealousy that Albertine inspired in me, because seeing her thus experience them I should have taken the measure and discovered the limit of her pleasures.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 566

I know I'm a broken record (does anyone even say that anymore?) but I keep reflecting back on the opening scene where Marcel is waiting for his mother to tear herself away from her social responsibilities to see him in his room.  It just seems that so much of Remembrance of Things Past is Marcel lacking something, or his frustration over his inability to control of know something.  Does this all come together nicely (actually, unpleasantly) in his relationship with Albertine.  He needs to know what she was doing or he needs to control her actions, really, than he needed to trust her word.  Proust writes, "All that I had wanted to know about her life in the past when I knew her only by sight, and at the same time all my desires in life, merged into this one sole curiosity, to know in what manner Albertine experienced pleasure, to see her with other women, perhaps because thus, when they had left her, I should have remained alone with her, the last and the master."  Is this a metaphor for his entire life?  If he knew life and controlled life would he be "the last and the master"?  To be fair, does that leave Marcel different than any of the rest of us?