When I call

Session.Load(objectType, id);

for one of my entity types (which is configured to be lazy) it appears that NHibernate is returning a Proxy to the instance - i.e. the entity type is:

Domain.Account

but the returned instance type is

CProxyTypeAccountDomain_INHibernateProxy_ISerializable2

I understand the the principal of using proxies to lazy load objects that are associated with a root object, but I'm unclear as to why a proxy would be returned when I am directly loading the object.

I think I can work around this issue OK, but I was hoping someone could clarify what is going on here - is there any benefit in using a proxy here and is this the expected behaviour?

Load will always return a proxy if the object is mapped as lazy. If you want to get the object use Get instead.

If you need to know the underlying type of the object use the NHibernateUtil.GetClass method on the proxy object.

Symon.