Baudelaire and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam look upon acts of charity and their agents without the usual concert of praise, and allow themselves some degree of irony. Their critique is first of all that of hypocrisy, mainly that of the false consciousness that accompanies charity. Real charity should rest upon equitable exchange, which the giving of money does not allow for. Such an exchange involves the gaze. The relationship thus established is one of sympathy, but especially of curiosity. Linked to the imagination, curiosity is inseparable form poetic activity. Charity and poetry, both linked to imagination, tend to blend together in the creation of the legend of the suffering being, which becomes for the poet more real than reality itself. But because it is an act of love, the charitable relationship is also a desire to project oneself into the other, and to possess the other. It is akin to prostitution. It becomes charged with sensuality and even cruelty. In a world cursed by the Fall, only irony can describe a debased charity which opens onto the grotesque. This is what Baudelaire and Villiers express, one in « Let Us Flay the Poor » (« Assommons les pauvres »), the other in « The Delights in a Good Deed » (« Les Délices d’une bonne oeuvre »).