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Rondelet's letter will amaze no reader of 'The Silence of Dean Maitland. That Mr. Paul Rondelet flew from his penny paper to a Paradise meet for him is a matter of congratulation to all but his creditors. He really is now in the only true Monastery of Thelema, and is simply dressed in an eye-glass and a cincture of pandanus flowers.
"Mademoiselle," he said as he wished us farewell, "you are going on a long journey, and I on a much longer, but I know that wherever you are there will be the house of Thelema." And as I helped him to pull his domino over his shoulders he whispered in my ear: "Beati qui in domino moriuntur."
He had lived each day as it came in the spirit of the Monks of Thelema. But his father's reception of the news of last night's escapade and the few words he had said had given him pause. Life had taken on of a sudden a less simple aspect.
The great truth that compulsion is not really a force on the side of virtue, but on the side of vice, had been clearly realized by the genius of Rabelais, when he said of his ideal social state, the Abbey of Thelema, that there was but one clause in its rule: Fay ce que vouldras.
"In these dear little nests they ought to have put lovers," said Amanda. "Oh, of course, YOU would have made the place Thelema...." But as they went shaking and bumping back along the evil road to Milan, he fell into a deep musing. Suddenly he said, "Work has to be done. Because this order or that has failed, there is no reason why we should fail.
But a strong sense of duty and a determination to act by it will carry a man a long way. He had little time for dreaming and this was perhaps a providential dispensation, for Sir Adrian's musings had now lost much of the grave placidity born of his long, peaceful residence in his Thelema of Scarthey.
What became of Picrochole after his defeat I cannot say with certainty, but I was told that he is now a porter at Lyons. He always inquires of all strangers on the coming of the Cocquecigrues, for an old woman has prophesied that at their coming he shall be re-established in his kingdom. III. The Abbey of Thelema
They enjoyed absolute liberty of thought and speech, tempered only by the seasoning of wit. They might well have taken for their motto the device of the Rabelaisian abbey: "Do what thou wilt." But they bragged a little: for they did not will anything much: they were like the enervated people of Thelema.
So that when a man and a woman who had lived under the rule of Thelema married each other, Rabelais tells us, their mutual love lasted undiminished to the day of their death. When the loss of autonomous freedom fails to lead to licentious rebellion it incurs the opposite risk and tends to become a flabby reliance on an external support.
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