There were still more serious circumstances when exasperation at the flippant tone about him carried him beyond the ordinary bounds of that polite time.  A guest at table asked contemptuously what was the use of a nation like the French having reason, if they did not use it.  “They mock the other nations of the earth, and yet are the most credulous of all.”  ROUSSEAU:  “I forgive them for their credulity, but not for condemning those who are credulous in some other way.”  Some one said that in matters of religion everybody was right, but that everybody should remain in that in which he had been born.  ROUSSEAU, with warmth:  “Not so, by God, if it is a bad one, for then it can do nothing but harm.”  Then some one contended that religion always did some good, as a kind of rein to the common people who had no other morality.  All the rest cried out at this in indignant remonstrance, one shrewd person remarking that the common people had much livelier fear of being hanged than of being damned.  The conversation was broken off for a moment by the hostess calling out, “After all, one must nourish the tattered affair we call our body, so ring and let them bring us the joint.”  This done, the servants dismissed, and the door shut, the discussion was resumed with such vehemence by Duclos and Saint Lambert, that, says the lady who tells us the story, “I feared they were bent on destroying all religion, and I prayed for some mercy to be shown at any rate to natural religion.”  There was not a whit more sympathy for that than for the rest.  Rousseau declared himself paullo infirmior, and clung to the morality of the gospel as the natural morality which in old times constituted the whole and only creed.  “But what is a God,” cried one impetuous disputant, “who gets angry and is appeased again?” Rousseau began to murmur between grinding teeth, and a tide of pleasantries set in at his expense, to which came this:  “If it is a piece of cowardice to suffer ill to be spoken of one’s friend behind his back, ’tis a crime to suffer ill to be spoken of one’s God, who is present; and for my part, sirs, I believe in God.”  “I admit,” said the atheistic champion, “that it is a fine thing to see this God bending his brow to earth and watching with admiration the conduct of a Cato.  But this notion is, like many others, very useful in some great heads, such as Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Socrates, where it can only produce heroism, but it is the germ of all madnesses.”  ROUSSEAU:  “Sirs, I leave the room if you say another word more,” and he was rising to fulfil his threat, when the entry of a new-comer stopped the discussion.[224]