The most inoffensive pastime of this madman was the care of his own divinity.[11.4] In this he used a sort of bitter irony, a mixture of the serious and the comic (for the monster was not wanting in wit), a sort of profound derision of the human race. The enemies of the Jews were not slow to perceive the advantage they might derive from this mania. The religious abasement of the world was such that not a protest was heard against the sacrilege of the Cæsar; every worship hastened to bestow upon him the titles and the honors which it had reserved for its gods. It is to the eternal glory of the Jews that, in the midst of this ignoble idolatry, they uttered the cry of outraged conscience. The principle of intolerance which was in them, and which led them to so many cruel acts, showed here its bright side. Alone affirming their religion to be the absolute religion, they would not bend to the odious caprice of the tyrant. This was the source of untold troubles for them. It needed only that there should be in any city some man discontented with the synagogue, spiteful, or simply mischievous, to bring about frightful consequences. At one time the people would insist on erecting an altar to Caligula in the very place where the Jews could least of all suffer it.[11.5] At another, a troupe of ragamuffins would collect, hooting and crying out against the Jews for alone refusing to place the statue of the emperor in their houses of prayer; then the people would run to the synagogues and the oratories; they would install there the bust of Caligula;[11.6] and the unfortunate Jews were placed in the alternative of either renouncing their religion, or committing treason. Thence followed frightful vexations.