His obsession by the contrast between rich and poor reduces to the same sentiment. He does not hate the rich because they are rich; he is only sorry for them if money has taken away from them something they might have had in poverty. He is not sorry for the poor because they are poor, but only if their poverty expresses the lack of something that, with money, they think they might have had. He has come to regard illusions as the only sterling coin. In the two contrasted tales of “The Italian Organ” he seems to weigh rich and poor in opposite scales, and to find a balance between them. One tune of the organ reminds a poor clerk’s wife of the days before she married, when she was the prettiest girl at the cheap dances, and Monsieur Fred, amusing himself, filled her head with dreams. Riches have carried him away from her, and she has grown paler, and married Jules with the stiff collar and the india-rubber-cleaned gloves. It is very sad. Another tune reminds the Countess of the days before she married, when as la Belle Adah of the American Circus, she reigned in her own place. The Count fell in love with her, pursued her, married her, and trained her to be a lady. She spends her mornings in visiting institutions, and there is a vicar waiting on her in the drawing-room. It is very sad. But the sorrow of both these women is not for their riches or their poverty. It is mourning for a life that can never be lived. Coppée’s love for the poor is unlike Daudet’s. Daudet loves the poor because they are brave and picturesque. Coppée sees in them the simpleness of heart and the power of dreaming that were his when he was poor himself, that is to say, when he was young. The poor invented Christianity.