Thomas Mitchell credited as playing...
Clopin
- Clopin: [to Gringoire immediately following flogging of Quasimodo] Never trust a man with pinched nostrils and thin lips.
- Clopin: We will now choose the King of Fools. Africans come forth. Men. Women. The ugliest face wins the crown. Ugly faces...! Ugly faces...!
- Clopin: You needn't be ashamed. True, we're not great thieves like the nobles. Our robberies are petty compared to the wholesale plunder of the nation.
- Clopin: [while watching the whipping of Quasimodo, Clopin tells Gringoire that he too has been whipped] Twice. Now I buy protection.
- Gringoire: From Who?
- Clopin: Nobility.
- Gringoire: The guardians of the old and holy tradition.
- Clopin: The very same. They buy it from the king, and sell it to those beneath them. It's quite alright. You see, after the war - and don't forget it lasted a hundred years - thousands of us went from door to door asking for honest work, and we were whipped for begging. The ruling class didn't say, Work or starve; they said, Starve, for you shall not work.
- Gringoire: And I starved.
- Clopin: Thousands did, until I organised the beggars guild.
- Gringoire: Of which I am beggar number 7419.
- Clopin: You needn't be ashamed. True we're not great thieves like nobles. Our robberies are petty compared to the wholesale plunder of the nation.
- Gringoire: I wonder if the moral difference isn't in our favour
- Clopin: Right. Some day you and I will write a book on the truth of beggary.
- Gringoire: [Reciting a poem during the Fools Day festivities] You rest and live, and rest again. Beware you do not live in vain.
- Clopin: [Mocking and interrupting Gringoire...] And if you eat to much you will throw it up again!
- Gringoire: [as the mob breaks into raucous laughter] You stupid, ignorant drunkard. I offer you truth!
- One of the mob: We don't want your truth!