From this moment Paisiello, with all his jealousy, was obliged to discontinue his intrigues against a musician, whom Naples had once more adopted. Cimarosa had taken no part in the plot against Guglielmi; but he was by no means delighted with Guglielmi's success. Prince San Severo, who admired the works of all three, invited them to a magnificent banquet where he made them embrace one another, and swear eternal friendship.[63] Let us hope that he was not the cause of either of them committing perjury. [Sidenote: FINALES.] Paisiello seems to have been an intriguer all his life, and to have been constantly in dread of rivals; though he probably had less reason to fear them than any other composer of the period. However, at the age of seventy-five, when he had given up writing altogether, we find him, a few months before his death, getting up a cabal against the youthful Rossini, who was indeed destined to eclipse him, and to efface even the memory of his _Barbiere di Siviglia_, by his own admirable opera on the same subject. It is as if, painting on the same canvas, he had simply painted out the work of his predecessor. * * * * * Cimarosa, though he may have possessed a more dignified sense than Paisiello of what was due to himself, had less vanity. A story is told of a painter wishing to flatter the composer of _Il Matrimonio Segretto_, and saying that he looked upon him as superior to Mozart. "Superior to Mozart!" exclaimed Cimarosa. "What should you think, Sir, of a musician, who told you that you were a greater painter than Raphael?" * * * * * Among the other composers who adorned the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, may be mentioned Sacchini, the successor of Piccinni in Paris; Salieri, the envious rival of Mozart, and (in Paris) the successor of Gluck; Paer, in whose _Camilla_ Rossini played the child's part at the age of seven (1799); Mayer, the future master of Donizetti; and Zingarelli, the future master of Bellini, one of whose operas was founded on the same _libretto_ which afterwards served the pupil for his _Capuletti i Montecchi_. * * * * * Piccinni is not connected in any direct manner with the present day; but it is nevertheless to Piccinni that we owe the first idea of those magnificent finales which, more than half a century afterwards, contributed so much to the success of Rossini's operas, and of which the first complete specimens, including several movements with changes of key and of rhythm, occur in _La Cecchina ossia la Buona Figliuola_, produced at Rome in 1760. Logroscino, who sometimes passes as the inventor of these finales, and who lived a quarter of a century earlier, wrote them only on one theme. The composer who introduced dramatic finales into serious opera, was Paisiello. It may interest the reader to know, that the finale of _Don Giovanni_ lasts fifteen minutes.