The author of “Jurgen” connects this craving for fiction with a primordial human instinct which he considers as being the same force which actuates all life. The world in which his people move is not a world for the Puritans. Everything in it is sensually refined and steeped in voluptuousness. The Jurgens, the Dom Manuels and the Florian de Puysanges are little troubled with their consciences. Does not Jurgen go so far as to make of conscience an attribute of the damned? Cabell opposes to the grim universe of the Puritans the land of Courtesy, and what he calls the Utopia of Gallantry. This Cabellian country resembles Rabelais’ Abbey of Thélème whose door flashed with the radiant motto “Do just as you please.” In this delectable country, we are told: The wisest may well unbend occasionally, to give conscience a half-holiday, and procure a passport to this delectable land. True, there are, as always in travel, the custom-house regulations to be observed: in this realm exist no conscientious scruples, no probity, no religion, no pompous notions about altruism, not any sacred tie of any sort, and such impedimenta will be confiscated at the frontier. We are entering a territory wherein ethics and ideals are equally contraband.... It is a carefree land, where life, untrammeled by the restrictions of moral codes, untoward weather, limited incomes or apprehension of the police, has no legitimate object save the pursuit of progress and refinement. Let us now enter Cocaigne.