Victor Hugo: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

BOOK FIRST. CHAPTER 1. THE GRAND HALL. (continued)

"Holà hé! good day, monsieur le recteur Thibaut! Tybalde aleator! Old fool! old gambler!"

"God preserve you! Did you throw double six often last night?"

"Oh! what a decrepit face, livid and haggard and drawn with the love of gambling and of dice!"

"Where are you bound for in that fashion, Thibaut, Tybalde ad dados, with your back turned to the university, and trotting towards the town?"

"He is on his way, no doubt, to seek a lodging in the Rue Thibautodé?"* cried Jehan du M. Moulin.

* Thibaut au des,--Thibaut of the dice.

The entire band repeated this quip in a voice of thunder, clapping their hands furiously.

"You are going to seek a lodging in the Rue Thibautodé, are you not, monsieur le recteur, gamester on the side of the devil?"

Then came the turns of the other dignitaries.

"Down with the beadles! down with the mace-bearers!"

"Tell me, Robin Pouissepain, who is that yonder?"

"He is Gilbert de Suilly, Gilbertus de Soliaco, the chancellor of the College of Autun."

"Hold on, here's my shoe; you are better placed than I, fling it in his face."

"Saturnalitias mittimus ecce nuces."

"Down with the six theologians, with their white surplices!"

"Are those the theologians? I thought they were the white geese given by Sainte-Geneviève to the city, for the fief of Roogny."

"Down with the doctors!"