But, notwithstanding the difficulties which he found in dealing with them, he and others succeeded in drawing over a great number of Donatists to the Church. And this made the Circumcellions so furious that they fell on the Catholic clergy whenever they could find them, and tried to do them all possible mischief. They beat and mangled some of them cruelly; they put out the eyes of some by throwing a mixture of lime and vinegar into their faces; and, among other things, they laid a plan for waylaying Augustine himself, which, however, he escaped, through the providence of God. Many reports of these savage doings were carried to the emperor, Honorius, and some of the sufferers appeared at his court to tell their own tale; whereupon the old laws against the sect were revived, and severe new laws were also made. In these even death was threatened against Donatists who should molest the Catholics; but Augustine begged that this penalty might be withdrawn, because the Catholic clergy, who knew more about the sect than any one else, would not give information against it, if the punishment of the Donatists were to be so great. And he and his brethren requested that the emperor would appoint a meeting to be held between the parties, in order that they might talk over their differences, and, if possible, might come to some agreement. The emperor consented to do so; and a meeting took place accordingly, at Carthage, in 411, in the presence of a commissioner named Marcellinus. Two hundred and eighty-six Catholic bishops found their way to the city by degrees. But the Donatists, who were two hundred and seventy-nine in number, entered it in a body, thinking to make all the effect that they could by the show of a great procession. At the conference (or meeting), which lasted three days, the Donatists behaved with their usual pride and insolence. When Marcellinus begged them to sit down, they refused, because our Lord had stood before Pilate. On being again asked to seat themselves, they quoted a text from the Psalms, "I will not sit with the wicked" (_Ps._ xxvi. 5); meaning that the Catholics were the wicked, and that they themselves were too good to sit in such company. And when Augustine called them "brethren," they cried out in anger that they did not own any such brotherhood. They tried to throw difficulties in the way of arguing the question fairly; but on the third day their shifts would serve them no longer. Augustine then took the lead among the Catholics, and showed at great length both how wrongly the Donatists had behaved in the beginning of their separation from the Church, and how contrary to Scripture their principles were.