She's on the stairs, ma'am, getting her breath,' said the young servant, who had not been long up from the country, where my mother had the excellent habit of getting all her servants. Often she had seen them born. That's the only way to get really good ones. And they're the rarest of luxuries.
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past: Volume I - Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove
caste, class, elitism, humor, servants, society