As usual she stirred thallium into his tea while he talked contemptuously of Charles Jennens’ Biblical compilation of the libretto of Handel’s “Messiah”. He sipped his tea as he held forth upon Congreve’s patchy “Semele” and contrasted it with Dryden’s “Alexander’s Feast”. She poured his second cup and he prattled of Christian Friedrich Henrici, the author of texts for many of Bach's church cantatas. He clutched his stomach but continued talking, talking, talking. She was pleased to notice that his hair was thinning. He asked for aspirin. She gave him two with another cup of tea to wash it down.
“Funny” he said. “I can’t feel the cup”. He said that tax collectors nowadays would benefit from a “Peasant Cantata” like that written for the Leipzig chamberlain Carl Heinrich von Dieskau. He fainted.
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