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*In the place of this passage, the manuscript contains the following:

“What? You wouldn’t kill yourself after all?” she said with a laugh.

“No, but it would be the greatest sorrow that I could possibly imagine.” And since, although living exclusively with me, and having become extremely intelligent, she none the less remained mysteriously in tune with the atmosphere of the world outside—as the roses in her bedroom flowered again in the spring—and followed as though by a pre-established accord (for she spoke to almost no one) the charmingly idiotic fashions of feminine speech, she said to me: “Is it really true, that great big fib?” And indeed she must, if not love me more than I loved her, at least infer from my niceness to her that my tenderness was deeper than it was in reality, for she added: “You’re very sweet. I don’t doubt it at all, I know you’re fond of me.” And she went on: “Ah, well, perhaps it’s my destiny to die in a riding accident. I’ve often had a presentiment of it, but I don’t care a fig. I accept whatever fate has in store for me.”

I believe that, on the contrary, she had neither a presentiment of nor a contempt for death, and that her words were lacking in sincerity. I am sure in any case that there was no sincerity in mine, as to the greatest sorrow I could imagine. For, feeling that Albertine could henceforth only deprive me of pleasures or cause me sorrows, that I would be ruining my life for her sake, I remembered the wish that Swann had once formed apropos of Odette, and without daring to wish for Albertine’s death, I told myself that it would have restored to me, in the words of the Sultan, my peace of mind and freedom of action.

*There is an additional passage here, isolated by the Pléiade editors at the foot of the page. Saniette reappears further on.

“Pretty well played, what!” said M. Verdurin to Saniette. “My only fear,” the latter replied, stuttering, “is that Morel’s very virtuosity may somewhat offend against the general spirit of the work.” “Offend? What do you mean?” roared M. Verdurin while a number of the guests gathered round like lions ready to devour a man who has been laid low. “Oh, I’m not aiming at him alone …” “But the man doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Aiming at what?” “I … shall have … to listen to it … once again to form a judgment à la rigueur.” “À la rigueur! the man’s mad!” said M. Verdurin, clutching his head between his hands, “he ought to be put away.” “The term means with exactitude.’ You ca … ca … can say ‘with rigorous exactitude,’ after all. I’m saying that I can’t judge à la rigueur.” “And I’m telling you to go away,” M. Verdurin shouted, intoxicated by his own rage, and pointing to the door with blazing eyes. “I will not allow people to talk like that in my house!”

Saniette went off zigzagging like a drunken man. Some of the guests, seeing him thus ejected, assumed that he had not been invited. And a lady who had been extremely friendly with him hitherto, and to whom he had lent a precious book the day before, sent it back to him next day without a word, scarcely even wrapped in some paper on which she had her butler simply put Saniette’s address. She did not wish to be in any way “indebted” to someone who was obviously far from being in the good graces of the little clan. Saniette, as it happened, was never to know of this piece of rudeness. For scarcely five minutes had passed after M. Verdurin’s outburst when a footman came to inform the latter that M. Saniette had had a stroke in the courtyard. But the evening was not yet over. “Have him taken home; I’m sure it won’t be serious,” said M. Verdurin, whose hotel particulier, as the manager of the hotel at Balbec would have said, thus became assimilated to those grand hotels where the management hasten to conceal sudden deaths in order not to frighten off their customers, and where the deceased is temporarily hidden in a meat-safe until the moment when, even if he has been in his lifetime the most distinguished and the most