Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/551

PT? T> -Hi t - in the 14th century) as part of their patrimony throughout the 15th and 16th centuries. The town enjoyed a great many privi leges, and in return was bound to furnish the court with fish. Its earthen walls, from 20 to 50 feet in height and 7260 feet in circuit, remained till 1759. Lake Pleshtcheevo was the scene of Peter the Great s first attempts at creating a fleet. PEREZ, ANTONIO (c. 1540-1611), for some years the favourite minister of Philip II. of Spain and afterwards for many more the object of his unrelenting hostility, was by birth an Aragonese. His reputed father, Gonzalo Perez, an ecclesiastic, has some place in history as having been secretary both to Charles V. and to Philip II., and in litera ture as author of a Spanish translation of the Odyssey (La Ulyxea de Homero, Antwerp, 1556). Antonio Perez, who was legitimated by an imperial diploma issued at Valladolid in 1542, was, however, believed by many to be in reality the son of the well-known Ruy Gomez, prince of Eboli, to whom, on the completion of a liberal education at home and abroad, he appears at least to have owed his first introduction to a diplomatic career. In 1567 he became one of the secretaries of state, receiving also about the same time the lucrative appointment of protonotary of Sicily, and in 1573 the death of Ruy Gomez himself made room for Perez s promotion to be head of the "despacho uni versal," or private bureau, from which Philip attempted to govern by assiduous correspondence the affairs of his vast dominions. Another of the king s secretaries at this time, though in a less confidential relation, was a friend and contemporary of Perez, named Juan de Escovedo, who, however, after the fall of Tunis in 1574, was sent off to supersede Juan de Soto as secretary and adviser of Don John of Austria, thus leaving Perez without a rival. Some time after Don John s appointment to the governorship of the Netherlands Perez accidentally became cognizant of his inconveniently ambitious "empresa de Inglaterra," in which he was to rescue Mary queen of Scots, marry her, and so ascend the throne of England. This secret scheme the faithful secretary at once carried to Philip, who char acteristically resolved to meet it by quietly removing his brother s aider and abettor. With the king s full cognizance, accordingly, Perez, after several unsuccessful attempts to poison Escovedo, succeeded in procuring his assassination in a street of Madrid on 31st March 1578. The imme diate effect was to raise Perez higher than ever in the royal confidence and favour, but, wary though the secretary had been, he had not succeeded in obliterating all trace of his connexion with the crime, and very soon a prosecution was set on foot by the representatives of the murdered man. For a time Philip was both willing and able to protect his accomplice, but ultimately he appears to have listened to those who, whether truly or falsely, were con tinually suggesting that Perez had had motives of his own, arising out of his relations with the princess of Eboli, for compassing the assassination of Don John s secretary ; be this as it may, from trying to screen Perez the king came to be the secret instigator of those who sought his ruin. The process, as such matters often are in Spain, was a slow one, and it was not until 1589 that Perez, after more than one arrest and imprisonment on a variety of charges, seemed on the eve of being convicted and condemned as the murderer of Escovedo. At this juncture he succeeded in making his escape from prison in Castile into Aragon, where, under the ancient "fueros" of the kingdom he could claim a public trial in open court, and so bring into requisition the documentary evidence he possessed of the king s complicity in the deed. This did not suit Philip, who, although he instituted a process in the supreme tri bunal of Aragon, speedily abandoned it and caused Perez to be attacked from another side, the charge of heresy being now preferred, arising out of certain reckless and even blasphemous expressions Perez had used in connexion with P E R 525 his troubles in Castile. But all attempts to remove the accused from the civil prison in Saragossa to that of the Inquisition raised popular tumults, which in the end led to Perez s escape across the Pyrenees, but unfortunately also furnished Philip with a pretext for sending an army into Aragon and suppressing the ancient " fueros " altogether (1591). From the court of Catherine de Bourbon, at Pau, where he was well received, Perez passed to that of Henry IV. of France, and both there and in England his talents and diplomatic experience, as well as his well-grounded enmity to Philip, secured him much popularity. While in England he became the " intimate coach-companion and bed-companion " of Francis Bacon, and was also much in the society of the earl of Essex. The peace of Vervins in 1598 greatly reduced his apparent importance abroad, and Perez now tried to obtain the pardon of Philip III., that he might return to his native country. His efforts, how ever, proved vain, and he died in comparative obscurity in Paris on 3d November 1611. Some years afterwards his wife and family were relieved from the ban of the Inquisi tion, under which, along with himself, they had been laid. Perez s earliest publication was a small quarto, dedicated to the earl of Essex, written and apparently printed in England about 1594, entitled Pcdazos de Historia, and professedly published at Leon. A Dutch translation appeared in 1594, and in 1598 he pub lished his Relacioncs, including the Memorial del Hecho de su Causa, drawn up in 1590, and many of his letters. The Paris edition is dedicated to Henry IV., but apparently another issue was inscribed to the pope. Both dedications are given in the fullest reprint, that of Geneva (1654), which includes a collection of "aphorisms" culled from the author s writings. The literary performances of Perez owe their importance almost exclusively to the fascination of his personal narrative, which, however, gives no great impres sion of simplicity and straightforwardness ; the letters, though admittedly models of idiomatic Castilian, are somewhat tedious reading. Much has recently been done, by Mignet (Antonio Perez ct Philippe II., 1845, 4th ed., 1874) and by Froucle ("An Unsolved Historical Riddle," Nineteenth Cent., 1883) among others, towards the elucidation of various difficult points in Perez s somewhat per plexing story. PERFUMERY is the art of manipulating odoriferous substances for the gratification of the sense of smell. Perfumes may be divided into two classes, the first of which includes all primitive or simple odoriferous bodies derived from the animal or vegetable kingdom, as well as the definite chemical compounds specially manufactured, while the second comprises the various "bouquets" or "melanges" made by blending two or more of the fore going in varying proportions, toilet powders, dentifrices, sachets, and the like. To the former class belong (1) the animal products, ambergris, castor, civet, musk ; (2) essential oils (more properly called attars), mostly procured by distillation ; (3) the philicome butters or oils, which are either solid or liquid fats charged with odours by the processes of inflowering or maceration ; (4) the odori ferous gum -resins or balsams which exude naturally or from wounds in the trunks of various trees and shrubs, such as benzoin, opoponax, peru, tolu, storax, myrrh ; (5) a few chemical bodies, similar in odour to or identical in odoriferous active principle with certain plants, e.g., nitro- benzol, called attar of mirbane or false almond, vanillin or methyl-protocatechuic aldehyde, coumarin or coumaric anhydride, and a few others. Ammonia and acetic acid are used respectively as smelling salts and in the prepara tion of aromatic vinegar, but can scarcely be considered as perfumes. The second class contains the endless combina tion of tinctures for scenting the handkerchief sold under fancy names which may or may not afford a clue to their composition, such as "comedie francaise," " eau de senteur," "eau de Cologne," "lavendre ambree," "blumengeist." These are sometimes made upon a quasi-scientific basis, namely, that of the odophone or gamut of odours of the late Dr Septimus Piesse. Their numbers may be almost