Barbier and Carre were the librettists of many successful French operas in the period 1850–1880, including Gounod's Faust and Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffman. Many of their librettos present anthropomorphic ideas derived from Ovid and fantastic ideas derived from Hoffman. A recurrent feature is the devil, presented as a villanous (though often comic) controlling force, sometimes in the person of a doctor. Mephistopheles in Gounod's Faust is to be seen as more a creation of Hoffmann than of Goethe. Saint‐Saen's first opera, the little‐known Le Timbre d'argent, is discussed as a typical specimen of Barbier and Carre's work.