Coppée was kind, tender-hearted, and sociable, the very type of the popular and sentimental _Parnassien_. He spoke in an artless manner, as much like a Christian as a poet, and the modesty of this _Academicien_, this "immortal" loaded with honours, was delightful.
He found me one evening reading some verses of Heredia. "You are unfaithful to me, dear friend," he said.
"I like all good poets," I replied, "and this one opens wide horizons to me. He seems very far...."
"You are right. I merely try to see what is near me," said Coppée with a smile.
Little Marthe was very proud of the poet, but this did not prevent her from making use of him. She made him gather shells for her, one summer, on a small beach in Normandy, and told him to store them in his large felt hat. It was there that he once took us to a huge rock in a secret hole of which he showed me a large box of cigarettes.
"The doctor strictly forbids me to smoke," he explained, "and my sister (Coppée was a bachelor and lived with his sister, who was the most devoted person one could well conceive) sees to it that the doctor's instructions are carried out. Therefore, I come here secretly to smoke. Life without tobacco, you know...." Then taking me to the other side of the rock, he pointed to the sand which was strewn with hundreds of cigarette ends, and cheerfully exclaimed: "What a cemetery!"
Marthe, who was then seven years old, had often heard that Coppée was a great man, and that all which came from a great man was worth keeping. While we walked on, Coppée and I, she gathered all the cigarette ends, hid them, and the next day, put them in a box which she would not let out of her hands. Coppée, later on questioned her about the precious contents of the box.... He believed, as I did, that it contained sea-shells, and he was very much tickled when she opened the box, and in her little fluty voice, declared: "I too want to have a keepsake from you, and I have it!"
In Paris I often saw Coppée as I passed by the Café des Vosges, his favourite haunt, a few hundred yards away from the Impasse Ronsin. He saluted me, quickly paid the waiter, overtook me, and together we walked to my house, talking of books.
He himself organised a performance at my villa of his _Passant_, the charming one-act play which had made him famous when he was twenty-seven, and still a clerk in the Ministry of War.