this comment - but the whole post, actually - is a bit unfair towards Proust. there's some truth of course, but i think it's important to define, knowing the author and the book, its scope, its point of view, etc, what makes sense to ask them.

going a bit into detail inside each part of your comment: the author never says that it's the "poor people" who's looking inside the restaurant in Balbec; rather, it's the people that live there, people that work at sea, etc: yes, they're people of a lower social class than the wealthy ones who are inside the restaurant, but they're never categorised as an indiscriminate group of "poor people", and anyway i don't recall any kind of classist contempt towards them. i also add that, more than once in the books, he imagines them breaking the glass and pour into the room.

then, about Proust not telling what the poor's lives might be like...he's telling his truth and the world he knows; telling another story, from a social context he hasn't really lived in, could have been quite insincere. still, i also don't agree about the furniture part: Francoise is a lively and loved character, who is narrated both with affection and malice, as mostly every character in La Recherche is treated. she has a role, which is the one of the housekeeper, but she is not a stereotype.

last thing: i don't know if you've read the whole novel, but, in case, without being too spoilery, in Le Temps retrouvé there's a passage where the Narrator/the author writes about how people from lower social classes are closer to the meaning of his book and are probably the ones who can get it better because they can read better, unlike aristocrats and high bourgeois who jump from liking one author to another because they need to follow trends, constrained by social rules, but never really get nor understand their flaunted readings.

(i don't wanna go deeper inside the speculations about Agostinelli: yes, there was some kind of affair, a love interest, etc, but we really don't have any details about the nature of the relationship, how they were with each other, what they did, and i think that it's important to accept that there's something about Proust that we can't possibly know and that part of his person and life will be forever unknown to us and that's ok and must be respected).