A taciturn, elusive character, Jean-Michel Frank grew up in the bourgeoisie ofAvenue Kléber during the final days of theDreyfus Affair. The teenager gradually found his bearings in friendships with the future Surrealist poet René Creveland Léon Pierre-Quint, future publisher and Proust's first biographer. Jacques Porel, his fellow student at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly, wrote in Fils de Réjane, souvenirs: “Jean-Michel was very badly thought of by all his classmates. They thought he was ridiculous, absurd. All those pimply, deep-voiced ephebes, drunk on brutality, found his Oriental doll-like appearance and falsetto voice unacceptable. The teachers themselves were embarrassed by her small presence.” In 1922,Jacques de Lacretelle drew inspiration from his physical and psychological traits to create the hero of one of his most famous novels, Silbermann. The author recalls: “His voice was low and interrupted; it seemed to rise from secret and painful regions; I glimpsed in this being so different from the others an intimate, persistent, incurable distress, analogous to that of an orphan or a cripple”.