"Wine bibbing isn't one of my failings," said Gaius Marius, relaxing and cutting the wine pourer impressively short, then ensuring that his cup was filled almost to its brim with water.

They passed back and forth the stone bottle Quatch had snared, doubtless in part to make their odorous post more bearable, though every time the Mouser noted their bibbing he had a return of the feeling of occult wrongness.

He wrote little, and injured his health by the 'continued bibbing of strong and high-tasted liquors,' and died 'in a manner distracted' at his lodgings in Holborn, opposite Chancery Lane, on 2 September 1677, and was buried in Guildhall Chapel.