Public opinion, at first hostile to the accused, had almost completely turned in his favour, when, more than three years after his arrest, on the 14th October, 1664, the Attorney-General, Chamillart, pronounced his conclusions, which were to the effect that Foucquet, "attainted and convicted of the crime of high treason, and other charges mentioned during the trial," should be "hanged and strangled until death should follow, on a gallows erected on the Place de la Rue Sainte-Antoine, near the Bastille." The trial was generally regarded as being overweighted. Turenne said, in his picturesque manner, that the cord had been made too thick to strangle M. Foucquet. The financiers, always influential, having recovered from their first alarm, tried to save a man who, in his fall, might drag them down with him. For, in so comprehensive an accusation, who was there that was not compromised? Colbert was now detested; as a result his enemy appeared less black. As for the Chamber itself, it was divided into two parts, almost of equal strength. On the one hand there were those who, like Séguier and Pussort, wished to please the Court by ruining Foucquet, and on the other those who, like Olivier d'Ormesson, favoured the strict administration of justice, exempt from anger and hatred. It was on the 14th November, 1664, that Nicolas Foucquet appeared for the first time before the Chamber, which sat in the Arsenal. He wore a citizen's costume, a suit of black cloth, with a mantle. He excused himself for appearing before the Court without his magistrate's robe, declaring that he had asked for one in vain. He renewed the protest which he had made previously against the competency of the Chamber, and refused to take the oath. He then took his place on the prisoners' bench and declared himself ready to reply to the questions which might be put to him. The accusations made against him may be classified under four heads: payment collected from the tax-farmers; farmerships which he had granted under fictitious names; advances made to the Treasury; and the crime of high treason, projected but not executed, proved by the papers discovered at Saint-Mandé.