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Nor was the confidence placed by M. d'Auvergne in his friend misplaced; for when Chevillard was in his turn taken to the Bastille as his accomplice, he so carefully concealed the treaty in the skirt of his doublet that it escaped the search of the officials; and on seeing himself treated as a prisoner of state, he contrived by degrees to swallow it in his soup, in order that it should not afterwards fall into their hands in the event of his condemnation.
M. Chevillard had been asked to conduct, not one of the works of our recent masters, like Debussy or Dukas, whose style he renders to perfection, but Franck's Les Béatitudes, a work whose spirit he does not, to my mind, quite understand. The mystic tenderness of Franck escapes him, and he brings out only what is dramatic.
And so that performance of Les Béatitudes, though in many respects fine, left an imperfect idea of Franck's genius. But what seemed inconceivable, and what justly annoyed M. Chevillard, was that the whole of Les Béatitudes was not given, but only a section of them.
But M. Chevillard has communicated a warmth and energy of rhythm to it that it did not possess before. His interpretations of Beethoven, even if they are somewhat superficial, are very full of life.
This seeking for perfection has been carried on by his successor, M. Camille Chevillard, whose orchestra is even more refined still. One may say, I think, that it is to-day the best in Paris. M. Chevillard is more attracted by pure music than Lamoureux was; and he rightly finds that dramatic music has been occupying too large a place in Parisian concerts.
Although Berlioz has his place at the Chevillard and Conservatoire concerts, it is to the Châtelet that his followers flock; and their enthusiasm has not been affected by the campaign that for several years has been directed against Berlioz by some French critics under the influence of the younger musical party the followers of d'Indy and Debussy.
Here were groups of airmen in the rough, serviceable French sapper uniform loose-fitting blue coat, blue trousers with a double red stripe, blue flannel scarf about their necks, as if they had all got sore throats, and blue pointed forage caps. Here is Chevillard, that wonderful gymnast of the air.
"I saw you several weeks ago at the Chevillard concerts: I was with my mother, sitting a little away from you: I bowed to you: you looked through me, and frowned, and took no notice." "I looked at you?... My poor boy, how could you think that?... I did not see you. My eyes are tired. That is why I frown.... You don't think me so cruel as that?"
And so it happens that for six years the Chevillard Concerts have been given at the back of a music-hall, which has the same entrance, and which is only separated from the concert-room by a small passage, so that the roaring choruses of a danse du venire may mingle with an adagio of Beethoven's or a scene from the Tetralogy.
Materna and Lilli Lehmann. At the end of the season of 1897 Lamoureux wished to disband his orchestra in order to conduct concerts abroad. But the members of the orchestra decided to remain together under the name of the Association des Concerts-Lamoureux, with Lamoureux's son-in-law, M. Camille Chevillard, as conductor.
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