de Guermantes might be, in his choice of expressions, even when he wished to talk about the nobility, indebted to the humblest little tradesman, who would have said: “When one goes by the name of Duc de Guermantes,” whereas an educated man, a Swann, a Legrandin would not have said it. A duke may write novels worthy of a grocer, even about life in high society, titles and pedigrees being of no help to him there, and the epithet “aristocratic” be earned by the writings of a plebeian. Who had been, in this instance, the inferior from whom M.