In Search of Lost Time, Volume V_ The Captive, the Fugitive - Marcel Proust [231]
which, offering us only two alternatives, are somehow as atrociously circumscribed as a simple physical pain. I perpetually repeated both the argument which justified my anxiety and the one which proved it false and reassured me, within as narrow a space as the sick man who explores without ceasing, on an internal impulse, the organ that is causing his suffering and withdraws for an instant from the painful spot only to return to it a moment later. Suddenly, in the silence of the night, I was startled by a noise which, though apparently insignificant, filled me with terror, the noise of Albertine’s window being violently opened. When I heard nothing more, I wondered why this noise had caused me such alarm. In itself there was nothing so extraordinary about it, but I probably gave it two interpretations which alarmed me equally. In the first place it was one of the conventions of our life together that, since I was afraid of draughts, nobody must ever open a window at night. This had been explained to Albertine when she came to stay in the house, and although she was convinced that this was a fad on my part and thoroughly unhealthy, she had promised me that she would never infringe the rule. And she was so timorous about everything that she knew to be my wish, even if she disapproved of it, that she would have gone to sleep amid the fumes of a smouldering fire rather than open her window, just as, however important the circumstances, she would not have had me woken up in the morning. It was only one of the minor conventions of our life, but if she was prepared to violate this one without consulting me, might it not mean that she no longer needed to behave with circumspection, that she would violate them all just as easily? Besides, the noise had been violent, almost rude, as though she had flung the window open, crimson with rage, saying to herself: “This life is stifling me. I don’t care, I must have air!” I did not exactly say all this to myself, but I continued to think, as of an omen more mysterious and more funereal than the hoot of an owl, of that sound of the window which Albertine had opened. Filled with an agitation such as I had not perhaps felt since the evening at Combray when Swann had been dining downstairs, I paced the corridor all night long, hoping, by the noise that I made, to attract Albertine’s attention, hoping that she would take pity on me and would call me to her, but I heard no sound from her room. At Combray, I had asked my mother to come. But with my mother I feared only her anger; I knew that I would not diminish her affection by displaying mine. This made me hesitate to call out to Albertine. Gradually I began to feel that it was too late. She must long have been asleep. I went back to bed. In the morning, as soon as I awoke, since no one ever came to my room, whatever happened, without a summons, I rang for Françoise. And at the same time I thought: “I must speak to Albertine about a yacht which I mean to have built for her.” As I took my letters I said to Françoise without looking at her: “I shall have something to say to Mlle Albertine presently. Is she up yet?” “Yes, she got up early.” I felt untold anxieties which I could scarcely contain rise up in me as in a gust of wind. The tumult in my chest was so great that I was quite out of breath, as though buffeted by a storm. “Ah! but where is she just now?” “I expect she’s in her room.” “Ah! good! Well, I shall see her presently.” I breathed again; my agitation subsided; Albertine was here; it was almost a matter of indifference to me whether she was or not. Besides, had it not been absurd of me to suppose that she could possibly not be there? I fell asleep, but, in spite of my certainty that she would not leave me, it was a light sleep and its lightness related to her alone. For the sounds that were obviously connected with work in the courtyard, while I heard them vaguely in my sleep, left me untroubled, whereas the slightest rustle that came from her room, when she left it, or noiselessly returned, pressing the bell so gently, made me start,