# Duc de Guermantes — In Search of Lost Time character guide

> Duc de Guermantes in In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Basin, M. de Guermantes, the Duc de Guermantes

**First appearance:** 0013-volume-iii-the-guermantes-way

## Snapshot

The Duc de Guermantes, known to intimates as Basin, wears his ancient name like a second skin and treats the world as a stage on which Guermantes always takes the leading role.

## Who they are

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.

## In the story

### [I](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_search_of_lost_time_se/chapters/part-i-i)

Offers the narrator a Venetian cloak for the ball, mentions the Princesse de Parme's admiration, and urges his wife to hurry.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_search_of_lost_time_se/characters/m_de_guermantes
- 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