The mass of the people had reason to be satisfied, for a time, with the result of their appeal to the foreigner. A minority, consisting of all the men of position and of education, were not so well pleased with the experiment. The reign of the Puritans had come, and without a Milton to soften its austerity. The poets and men of letters, who had thriven at the numerous little courts, where the most bloodthirsty despot had always a hearty and appreciative welcome for a man of genius, and would generally cap his verses with impromptu lines, were disgusted with the savage Berbers, who could not understand their refinements, and who, when they sometimes attempted to form themselves upon the model of the cultivated tyrants who had preceded them, made so poor an imitation that it was impossible to help laughing. The free-thinkers and men of broad views saw nothing very encouraging in the accession to power of the fanatical priests who formed the Almoravides' advisers, and who were not only rabidly opposed to anything that savoured of philosophy, but read their Koran exclusively through the spectacles of a single commentator. The Jews and Christians soon discovered what the tolerance of the Almoravides was: they were cruelly persecuted, massacred, or else transported. The old noble families, the few that remained, and the remnants of the petty princes, were in despair when they saw the stranger, whom they had bidden to their aid, taking up his permanent station in their dominions, and recalled with terror the doings of similar hordes of Berbers in the latter days of the Cordovan Khalifate. But the mass of the people were glad enough to see the Almoravides staying in the land; their lives and goods were at last safe, which had never been the case when the country was cut up into a number of separate principalities, few of which were strong enough to protect their subjects outside the castle gates; the roads were free from the brigands who had made travelling impossible for many years, and the Christians, instead of pouncing upon unsuspecting villages and harrying the land, were driven back to their own territory, where a wholesome dread of the Berbers, and a long strife among themselves, kept them at a safe distance. Order and tranquillity reigned for the moment; the law was respected, and the people once more dreamed of wealth and happiness.