"Citoyens!" he breaks out in a stentorian voice.
"Hold! Scoundrel!" shouts Robespierre, desperately.
"Have the madman arrested!" cries a voice in the crowd.
Robespierre still does his utmost to force a passage on the stairway.
"I will speak! I will be heard, wretches! I will speak!"
The uproar increases, aggravated by Robespierre's boisterous pertinacity. The jingling of Thuriot's bell at last restores order, though not without difficulty.
The opening words of Tallien's speech are already audible, amidst enthusiastic cheers. Robespierre, held firmly by some of the deputies, has ceased his struggles, and stands on the steps in an indignant attitude, his features twitching convulsively, his eyes, glaring in hatred, fixed on the new speaker who is preparing to hurl at him another shower of insults.
"The masks are torn away!" cries Tallien.
"Bravo! Bravo!"
"It was the speech delivered yesterday in this very hall, and repeated the same evening at the Jacobin Club, that brought us face to face with this unmasked tyrant, this vaunted patriot, who at the memorable epoch of the invasion of the Tuileries and the arrest of the King, only emerged from his den three days after the fight..."