The first [second] book of the works of Mr. Francis Rabelais, Doctor in Physick, containing five books of the lives, heroick deeds, and sayings of Gargantua, and his sonne Pantagruel. Together with the Pantagrueline prognostication, the oracle of the divine Bachus, and response of the bottle. Hereunto are annexed the navigations unto the sounding isle, and the isle of the Apedests: as likewise the philosophical cream with a Limosm epistle. / All done by Mr. Francis Rabelais, in the French tongue, and now faithfully translated into English.

CHAP. LVII. How the Thelemites were governed, and of their manner of living.

ALL their life was spent not in lawes, sta∣tutes or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds, when they thought good: they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a minde to it, and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua establish∣ed it. In all their rule, and strictest tie of their order, there was but this one clause to be observed.

Do what thou wilt.

Because men that are free, well-borne, well-bred, and conversant in honest com∣panies, have naturally an instinct and spurre that prompteth them unto vertuous actions,

and withdraws them from vice, which is cal∣led honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to vertue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously inslaved; for it is agree∣able with the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is de∣nied us.

By this liberty they entered into a very laudable emulation, to do all of them what they saw did please one; if any of the gal∣lants or Ladies should say, Let us drink, they would all drink: if any one of them said, Let us play, they all played; if one said, Let us go a walking into the fields, they went all: if it were to go a hawking or a hunting, the Ladies mounted upon dainty well-paced nags, seated in a stately palfrey saddle, carried on their lovely fists miniard∣ly begloved every one of them, either a Sparhawk, or a Laneret, or a Marlin, and the young gallants carried the other kinds of Hawkes: so nobly were they taught, that there was neither he nor she amongst them, but could read, write, sing, play upon several musical instruments, speak five or sixe seve∣ral languages, and compose in them all very quaintly, both in Verse and Prose: never

were seene so valiant Knights, so noble and worthy, so dextrous and skilful both on foot and a horseback, more brisk and lively, more nimble and quick, or better handling all man∣ner of weapons then were there. Never were seene Ladies so proper and handsome, so mi∣niard and dainty, lesse froward, or more rea∣dy with their hand, and with their needle, in every honest and free action belonging to that sexe then were there: for this reason when the time came, that any man of the said Abbey, either at the request of his parents, or for some other cause, had a minde to go out of it, he carried along with him one of the Ladies, namely her whom he had before that chosen for his Mistris, and were married together: and if they had formerly in The∣leme lived in good devotion and amity, they did continue therein and increase it to a greater height in their state of matrimony: and did entertaine that mutual love till the very last day of their life, in no lesse vigour and fervency, then at the very day of their wedding: here must not I forget to set down unto you a riddle, which was found under the ground, as they were laying the foundation of the Abbey, ingraven in a copper plate; and it was thus as followeth.