Albertine sketches at the church of Saint-Jean-de-la-Haize

Albertine’s sketching at the church of Saint-Jean-de-la-Haize becomes both an artistic excursion and a study in the narrator’s divided desire: he brings her to a remote monument, leaves her there to paint, and makes the journey back to her more important than the landscape he once admired for itself.

The Remote Church and the Journey

Albertine has decided to take up painting again, choosing a church so isolated that few people have heard of it and finding it requires directions and a long approach. It lies more than half an hour from Epreville station, beyond the last houses of Quetteholme. The narrator even notes that the curé’s book and Brichot disagree about the origin of the name Epreville, one deriving it from Sprevilla and the other from Aprivilla. The place is hard to reach not as a picturesque convenience but as a practical obstacle shaping each outing.

Their first journey is made in the dog days. They take a train toward Grattevast, away from Féterne, after the narrator has struggled to leave immediately after lunch in the oppressive heat. Albertine suffers in the hot carriage and during the long walk across country; he worries that she will catch cold later, sitting still in the church’s damp hollow, where the sun does not reach. Remembering that she appreciates comfort as well as luxury, he arranges for a carriage from a Balbec livery stable to meet them each day.

The route through the forest of Chantepie offers a cool passage from the heat. Birds remain mostly invisible among the trees, their conversation giving the narrator a sense of repose; when he catches sight of one flitting from leaf to leaf, the small, startled body seems inconceivably slight beside the song attributed to it. The carriage cannot reach the church. After they pass through Quetteholme, the narrator leaves Albertine to continue on foot and promises to return for her at day’s end.

Solitude, Comfort, and Concealment

The narrator is uneasy about accompanying Albertine through an artistic experience. She has said of the church, as of other monuments and pictures, that it would be a pleasure to see it with him. He believes, however, that he can feel the pleasure of beautiful things only alone, or by pretending to be alone and not speaking. Rather than explain this difficulty, he says he must leave her and gives possible destinations for himself: a call on Madame Verdurin or the Cambremers, or an hour with his mother in Balbec, but nowhere farther away.

That arrangement is unsettled when Albertine complains that the church and La Raspelière lie in opposite directions, imprisoning her for the day wherever she chooses to go. Once her toque and veil arrive, the narrator orders a motor-car from Saint-Fargeau, concealing the plan until Albertine comes to call for him. She is surprised by the engine outside the hotel and delighted to learn that the car is for them. He presents her with the hidden toque and veil, and her joy and embrace make the vehicle and clothes part of the shared outing, not merely its equipment.

The scene also shows how the narrator’s practical care shades into arrangements that preserve his control over their movements. Albertine asks him to raise the car’s hood so she can display her new garments, with the possibility of lowering it later when they want greater privacy. Aimé, pleased by her smart appearance and by their rare means of transport, follows them downstairs and relays the request to the driver. The outing thus moves between display and seclusion, with comfort and mobility serving the couple’s changing wishes.

The Narrator’s Return to Albertine

When Albertine prefers to remain at Saint-Jean-de-la-Haise and paint, the narrator takes the car elsewhere, reaching Gourville, Féterne, Saint-Mars-le-Vieux, and even Criquetot before returning for her. He acts as though occupied with other pleasures and obliged to leave her, though his thoughts remain fixed on her. Often he goes only as far as the plain above Gourville. Its resemblance to the plain above Combray toward Méséglise lets him imagine the sea breeze continuing unobstructed to Quetteholme, stirring the trees around the church and touching Albertine’s face. Distance becomes a fanciful bond: he imagines the two of them separated from sight and hearing yet still together.

The roads back toward the sea have their own history for him. Formerly he shut his eyes before the sea came into view, contemplating its ancient agitation; now the same roads are simply the means of rejoining Albertine. Their familiar turns recall other pursuits, including his thoughts of Mlle de Stermaria and the streets where he hoped Mme de Guermantes might pass. He recognizes that his impatience to return to Albertine belongs to the same pattern as those earlier longings.

From this recurrence he draws a broader account of his character: some people, he reflects, do not chiefly seek fortune, success, or high position, but phantoms. They sacrifice other aims to pursue an imagined person, lose that figure when the pursuit fades, and may later return to it or replace it with another. The roads around Balbec are filled, in memory, with such pursuits. The church excursion therefore becomes part of a continuing cycle of desire rather than an isolated romantic episode; even the trees that will outlive him seem to press upon him the need to begin work before death.

Albertine’s Painting and the Church’s Art

At Quetteholme the narrator leaves the car, runs down a sunken lane, crosses a brook on a plank, and finds Albertine painting in front of the church. Its pinnacles appear thorny and red, like a flowering rose bush. The tympanum is smooth, and its smiling stone surface bears angels with candles, still seeming to celebrate the ceremonies of the thirteenth century before the modern couple. Albertine is trying to paint those figures on her prepared canvas, using sweeping strokes in imitation of Elstir and attempting to follow the noble rhythm he had taught her to notice in the angels.

When she has gathered her materials, the two walk back up the sunken path leaning on one another. The little church is left in silence beside the perpetual murmur of the brook. The scene brings Albertine’s work into contact with an older artistic vision: she is not simply recording a building but trying to learn how its figures and forms are organized through the guidance of Elstir.

On their return, the car takes a different route past Marcouville-l’Orgueilleuse. They stop at its partly new, partly restored church, where the setting sun makes the bas-reliefs seem to swim beneath a luminous, fluid surface. The Blessed Virgin, St Elizabeth, and St Joachim appear almost detached from the stone; modern statues rise through the warm haze, and a cypress stands before the church’s enclosure. Albertine objects that the building is restored, recalling Elstir’s praise of old stone, and the narrator marvels at the architectural discernment she has acquired.

The Toque, the Veil, and Changing Perception

The toque and veil Albertine wears on the return are recent additions to her appearance, but the narrator already experiences them as dear to him. As she walks around the restored church, he follows their visible trace past the cypress in the evening air. Albertine senses that the effect pleases him and smiles, adjusting the poise of her head to the headgear. The clothes give her a distinct bodily contentment, which the narrator finds charming; an accessory becomes part of the intimate image of her that he watches and cherishes.

The contrast between the two churches also registers a shift in attention. At Saint-Jean-de-la-Haize, Albertine tries to render medieval angels through the rhythm she has learned from Elstir; at Marcouville-l’Orgueilleuse, she quickly identifies restoration as a loss against the beauty of old stone. Meanwhile, the narrator’s attention is drawn not only to architecture but to Albertine’s clothing and presence. Art, place, and desire do not remain separate: the excursion gives her developing taste visible form, while the narrator’s changing use of the familiar roads reveals how completely the landscape has been reorganized around the effort to return to her.