Infreville is the stated destination of Albertine’s afternoon visit to an unnamed woman during the narrator’s second stay at Balbec. The proposed call becomes a test of the narrator’s suspicions: his offer to accompany Albertine makes her change her plans, while her shifting explanations leave him convinced that the visit conceals another purpose.

The Proposed Visit

Albertine says she must call on a woman who is at home every afternoon at five in Infreville. She first explains that she cannot miss the visit because the woman is difficult and might complain to her aunt; she then says that friends will also be there, and that she is expected to bring them back in her trap. The prospect of being asked to stay for dinner supplies another reason to go, despite trains running from Infreville until ten at night.

These practical details give the destination a place in the argument. The narrator is unwell and asks Albertine to stay with him, but she maintains that she must go. He proposes accompanying her and waiting apart, without visiting either the woman or her friends. Albertine appears shaken by the prospect. Although she insists that she enjoys going out with him, she immediately suggests changing direction and dining together elsewhere.

A Destination Under Suspicion

When the narrator reminds Albertine that the woman will be annoyed if she does not visit, Albertine reverses her position again: the woman can be visited tomorrow, next week, or later, and the friends have often left Albertine behind themselves. She now proposes going the other way, although there is no train back after nine, and offers alternatives such as finding a cart or bicycle or walking.

The narrator reads these contradictions as evidence that Infreville is not the real object of the outing. He suspects that the woman is a pretext for a meeting or plan Albertine does not want him to discover. The account remains explicitly limited to what he can infer: he cannot see clearly through the uncertainty surrounding her explanations, and he cannot establish what actually lies behind them.

The Narrator’s Response

The narrator concludes that Albertine is giving up a prior arrangement because he insists on accompanying her, and imagines that someone else will be disappointed by her decision. He also recognizes that jealousy can preserve rather than end a lover’s attachment: the person Albertine disappoints might return to her, as he believes he himself would. This is his interpretation of the situation, not a confirmed account of Albertine’s plans.

Rather than follow her or begin an investigation, he tells her he does not want to spoil her pleasure or tire himself with the vigilance such inquiries would demand. He says that the reason he will not accompany her is that she does not want him there, pointing to her successive contradictions as the proof. In this exchange, Infreville marks the boundary between Albertine’s account and the private reality the narrator suspects but cannot know.