# Marquis de Norpois — In Search of Lost Time character guide

> Marquis de Norpois in In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** M. de Norpois, Norpois, old Norpois

**First appearance:** 0006-place-names-the-name

## Snapshot

A retired ambassador whose ponderous diplomatic pronouncements and carefully weighed opinions make him the narrator's father's most trusted oracle on literature, love, and the Bergotte question.

## Who they are

M. de Norpois embodies the cautious, methodical spirit of the Quai d'Orsay transplanted into the drawing-room, where his verdicts on writers and suitors carry the weight of a career spent negotiating treaties. He takes a faintly amused interest in the narrator's literary ambitions, dispensing advice that is at once flattering and deflating. His disapproval of Bergotte, and his guarded view of the Swann marriage, quietly shape how the narrator's family judges the world he longs to enter.

## Links

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