But _Guillaume Tell_ had its admirers from the start.
I heard it spoken of constantly in my childhood.

If the work did not appear on the bills of the Opera, it furnished the amateurs with choice bits.
In my opinion, if Rossini committed suicide as far as his art was concerned, he did so because he had nothing more to say.

Rossini was a spoiled child of success and he could not live without it.

Such unexpected hostility put an end to a stream which had flowed so abundantly for so long.
The success of his _Soirees Musicales_ and his _Stabat_ encouraged him.
But he wrote nothing more except those slight compositions for the piano and for singing which may be compared to the last vibrations of a sound, as it dies away.
Later--much later--came _La Messe_ to which undue importance has been attributed.

"_Le Passus_," one critic wrote, "is the cry of a stricken spirit." La Messe is written with elegance by an assured and expert hand, but that is all.