The narrator tries to catch Albertine at Elstir’s studio

The narrator’s unexpected visit to Elstir’s studio turns jealousy into a practical attempt at surveillance. Albertine is absent, and the brief reassurance he draws from finding Andrée alone cannot hold: suspicion resumes its cycle, with each gesture, glance, or remembered scene offering fresh material for doubt.

Suspicion and the Visit

After Cottard accompanied him to the small casino at Incarville, the narrator began to see Albertine differently and to feel anger at her. He admits that he, too, had changed: he no longer wished her well and spoke of her in wounding terms, even where she might hear of them. His attitude was not constant, but any respite remained vulnerable to a new suspicion.

When he learned that Albertine and Andrée had both accepted an invitation to Elstir’s, he imagined that they would use the return journey to imitate the manners of fast young women. He did not announce his intention. Instead, he made an unexpected call at Elstir’s studio, hoping both to embarrass them and to deprive Albertine of the pleasure he believed she anticipated. The visit was therefore not a neutral encounter: it was a test devised around a conjecture he could not verify.

Absence and Temporary Reassurance

At the studio, the narrator found only Andrée. Albertine had chosen another day to go with her aunt. The absence could have deepened his fears, since it left his conjecture untested; instead, he briefly treated Andrée’s presence without Albertine as evidence that Cottard might have been mistaken. This favourable impression made him more kindly disposed toward Albertine, but only for a short time.

The episode shows how little certainty the narrator gains from observation. Albertine’s absence does not establish what she intended, and Andrée’s presence offers no decisive account of their relationship. The narrator’s visit changes his mood without resolving the question that drove him there.

The Return of Jealousy

The reassurance gives way as the narrator recalls details that had once seemed slight or innocent. He has seen Andrée lay her head on Albertine’s shoulder and kiss her neck; at other times, an exchanged glance or a report that the two had gone down together to bathe becomes grounds for renewed distress. These clues do not settle what happened. Their force comes from the narrator’s disposition to receive them as signs.

Suspicion also returns without any fresh encounter. The narrator can recall Albertine with Gisèle in a posture that seemed innocent at the time, yet now disrupts his recovered calm. He no longer needs to seek new information outside himself: memory supplies material for his own mistrust. He connects this interpretive habit to what he has heard about Swann’s love for Odette and Swann’s lifelong deception, using that account to imagine that Albertine may share Odette’s capacity for deceit. His fear thus draws on another love story as much as on anything the studio visit reveals.

Narrative Significance

The failed visit makes visible a recurring movement in the narrator’s attachment: pursuit brings no reliable knowledge, momentary reassurance is unstable, and uncertainty turns observation and memory into renewed suspicion. The attempted check at Elstir’s does not expose a secret; it exposes the limits of the narrator’s evidence and the way his changing feelings alter its meaning. What once seemed innocent can become incriminating in retrospect, while the absence of the person he sought to observe remains open to interpretation.