For the building of the abbey Gargantua gave twenty-seven hundred thousand eight hundred and thirty-one long-wooled sheep; and for the maintenance thereof he gave an annual fee-farm rent of twenty-three hundred and sixty-nine thousand five hundred and fourteen rose nobles.  In the building were nine thousand three hundred and thirty-two apartments, each furnished with an inner chamber, a cabinet, a wardrobe, a chapel, and an opening into a great hall.  The abbey also contained fine great libraries and spacious picture galleries.

All the life of the Thelemites was laid out, not by laws and rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure.  They rose from their beds when it seemed good to them; they drank, worked, ate, slept, when the wish came upon them.  No one constrained them in anything, for so had Gargantua established it.  Their rule consisted of this one clause: 

    DO WHAT THOU WILT

Because men are free, well-born, well-bred, conversant in honest company, have by nature an instinct and a spur that always prompt them to virtuous actions and withdraw them from vice; and this they style honour.  When the time was come that any man wished to leave the abbey, he carried with him one of the ladies who had taken him for her faithful servant, and they were married together; and if they had formerly lived together in Thelema in devotion and friendship, still more did they so continue in wedlock; insomuch that they loved one another to the end of their lives, as on the first day of their marriage.

IV.—­Pantagruel and Panurge

At the age of four hundred four score and forty-four years, Gargantua had a son by his wife, Badebec, daughter of one of the kings of Utopia.  And because in the year that his son was born there was a great drought, Gargantua gave him the name of Pantagruel; for panta in Greek is as much as to say all, and gruel in the Arabic language has the same meaning as thirsty.  Moreover, Gargantua foresaw, in the spirit of prophesy, that Pantagruel would one day be the ruler of the thirsty race, and that if he lived very long he would arrive at a goodly age.

Like his father, Pantagruel went to Paris to study.  There his spirit among his books was like fire among heather, so indefatigable was it and ardent.  One day as Pantagruel was taking a walk without the city he met a man of a comely stature and elegant in all the lineaments of his body, but most pitifully wounded, and clad in tatters and rags.

“Who are you, my friend?” said Pantagruel.  “What do you want, and what is your name?” The man answered him in German, gibberish, Italian, English, Basque, Lantern-language, Dutch, Spanish, Danish, Hebrew, Greek, Breton, and Latin.

“Well, well, my friend,” replied Pantagruel, when the man had come to an end, “can you speak French?”

“That I can very well, sir,” he replied, “for my name is Panurge, and I was bred and born in Touraine, which is the garden of France.  I have just come from Turkey, where I was taken prisoner, and my throat is so parched and my stomach so empty that if you will only put a meal before me, it will be a fine sight for you to see me walk into it.”