Napoleon had harangued sympathetic Jacobins in small political meetings; but to address a legislative body was new to him. His talk to the Ancients was incoherent and weak. He could not give the true reasons for his conduct, and the pretended reason could not be strengthened by explanation or fact. He was asked to specify the dangers which he said threatened the Republic, asked to describe the conspiracy, and name the conspirators. He could not do so, and after rambling all round the subject, his friends pulled him out of the chamber. Notwithstanding his disastrous speech, the conspiracy asserted its strength, and the Council of Ancients was held to the Bonaparte programme. Napoleon at once went to the Council of Five Hundred, and his appearance, accompanied by armed men, caused a tumult. “Down with the Dictator! For shame! Was it for this you conquered. Get out! Put him out!” Excited members sprang to their feet shouting, gesticulating, threatening. Rough hands were laid upon him. Knives may have been drawn. The Corsican, Peretti, had threatened Mirabeau with a knife in the assembly hall: Tallien had menaced Robespierre with a dagger; there is no inherent improbability in the story that the Corsican, Arena, a bitter enemy of Napoleon, now struck at him with a knife. At all events, the soldiers thought Napoleon in such danger that they drew him out of the press, General Gardanne (it is said) bearing him backward in his arms. “_Hors la loi!_” was shouted in the hall--the cry before which Robespierre had gone down. “Outlaw him! Outlaw him!” Lucien Bonaparte, president of the body, refused to put the motion. The anger of the Assembly then vented itself upon Lucien, who vainly attempted to be heard in defence of his brother. “He wanted to explain,” cried Lucien, “and you would not hear him!” Finding the tumult grow worse, and the demand that he put the motion grow more imperative, he stripped himself of the robe of office, sent for an escort of soldiers, and was borne out by Napoleon’s grenadiers.