Duc de Guermantes

Basin de Guermantes is a man of imposing presence and limited curiosity, whose pride in his lineage is matched only by his indifference to anything that does not flatter it. His marriage to Oriane, brilliant and restless, is a study in proximity without intimacy, and his casual cruelties toward those beneath him reveal how thoroughly he confuses rank with worth. For the narrator, he is the living proof that the Guermantes name, so luminous in imagination, is carried by a man whose grandeur is mostly inherited.