# Legrandin — In Search of Lost Time character guide

> Legrandin in In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** M. Legrandin, Legrandin

**First appearance:** 0004-combray

## Snapshot

An engineer with literary pretensions and a horror of being thought a snob, whose elaborate evasions about the Cambremer family betray exactly the snobbery he denies.

## Who they are

Legrandin cultivates the air of a man above mere social climbing, discoursing on cathedrals and sunsets while carefully avoiding any introduction that might compromise him. Yet his elaborate excuses for not presenting the narrator to his sister at Combray reveal a snobbery so refined it can only express itself as its opposite. He is the narrator's first lesson that the people who insist loudest on their indifference to rank are often the most anxiously attentive to it.

## In the story

### [A Fresh Light Upon Robert de Saint-Loup](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_search_of_lost_time_se/chapters/iv-a-fresh-light-upon-robert-de-saint-loup)

Now styles himself Legrandin de Méséglise; his nephew's marriage to Mademoiselle d'Oloron elevates his social standing, though he soon ceases to pursue social ambitions.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_search_of_lost_time_se/characters/leggrandin
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_search_of_lost_time_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_search_of_lost_time_se/characters