But Vadier, carried away by success, wanders presently from the main point, and loses himself in a maze of petty details. He repeats anecdotes going the rounds of taverns and wine-shops, speaks of Robespierre's spies dogging the heels of the Committee, and quotes his personal experience. The attention of the assembly begins to flag. Robespierre feels this and, taking instant advantage of it, tries to bring the Convention back to a sense of its dignity. "What! can you give credence to such arrant nonsense?" But Tallien has realised the danger, and rushing towards the tribune cries-- "I demand a hearing! We are wandering from the main question!" "Fear not! I shall return to it!" replies Robespierre, who has now reached the semicircle, and tries to enter the tribune by another stairway. But several members standing on the steps push him back. "No! we will have Tallien! Tallien!" "After me!" cries Robespierre, still struggling. "Tallien! Tallien has speech now!" But Robespierre climbs up by the banister with the fury of a madman. "Unjust, infamous judges! Will you then only listen to my enemies!" The Incorruptible is answered by the one cry rising from a hundred throats. "Silence! Order! Order! Tallien! Tallien!" Tallien is in the tribune. "_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..." Sneers and hisses reach Robespierre, repeated up to the very steps of the tribune, below which he stands. "This honourable citizen, who poses before the Committee of Public Safety as champion of the oppressed, goes home, and in the secrecy of his own house draws up the death-lists which have stained the altar of new-born Liberty with so much blood!" Renewed cheers and cries of "Hear! hear!" rise from nearly every seat in the hall.