Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846

To enforce his complaints, Don John sent Escovedo to Spain. Redress was not granted, and his messenger never returned to him. The deadly correspondence between Perez and himself – the outpourings of an ardent and daring temper, swelling with lofty designs, and pining beneath an apparently irremediable inaction, into the ears of a frigid and false winnower of unguarded words and earnest feelings – was continued unremittingly. M. Mignet, it seems to us, shows very satisfactorily, that Perez, in his abominable office of an unjust interpreter of the wishes and intentions of Don John, drugged Philip copiously with calumnious reports and unwarrantable insinuations. Be that as it may, we are inclined to believe, among other matters of a very different complexion, that, without repugnance on the part of Philip, there was a tossing about for a time, in the lottery of events, a marriage between Don John and our beautiful and unfortunate Mary. There is a pleasure and a grace sometimes in idle speculation; but to the leisure of a happier fancy than ours we commit the picture of the consequences of an union between the heroic Don John and the lovely Queen of Scotland. "Money, more money, and Escovedo," became at length, in his perplexity and anguish, the importunate clamour of the governor of the Netherlands. Then it was, as Perez tells us, that Philip and his obsequious counsellors meditated on the course best fitted for what was evidently a serious conjecture. Then it was, we learn from the same authority, that the king determined on the death of Escovedo.

"They took a review of the various schemes that had been planned in favour of Prince Don Juan, ever since his residence in Italy, without the king having any communication or perfect knowledge of them; they called to mind the grievous disappointment experienced by the authors of these projects, at the expedition to England not taking place according to their first idea; the attempt they made a second time, for the same object, with his Holiness, when they were in Flanders, and always without giving the king any account; the design of deserting the government of Flanders, when once the expedition to England was abandoned; the secret understandings formed in France without the king's knowledge; the resolution they had formed, to prefer going as adventurers into France, with six thousand foot and one thousand horse, to filling the highest offices; lastly, the very strong language with which the prince, in his letters, expressed his grief and despair. The result of all this seemed, that there was reason to fear some great resolution, and the execution of some great blow or other which might trouble the public peace, and the tranquility of his majesty's states, and, moreover, that Prince Don Juan might himself be ruined, if they let the secretary, Escovedo, remain any longer with him."

What a gap there is in the whole truth in this story, on which Perez subsequently built his defence, we shall now briefly explain. With one considerable exception, historians concur in their belief of the amours of Perez with the Princess of Eboli. Ranke, who is satisfied with the political explanation given by Perez of the murder of Escovedo, discredits the notion of Perez being a lover of the princess, because she was old, and blind of one eye, and because his own wife, Dona Juana Coëllo, evinced towards him, throughout his trial, the most devoted and constant affection.

"The last reason," says our author, with perfect truth, "goes for nothing." The love of woman buries her wrongs without a tear. "As to the objection," M. Mignet proceeds to remark, "derived from the age and appearance of the Princess of Eboli, it has not much foundation either. All contemporary writers agree in praising her beauty (hermosura.) Born in 1540, she married Ruy Gomez at the age of thirteen, and was only thirty-eight years old at the present period. She was not one-eyed, but she squinted. There was nothing in her person to prevent the intimacy which Ranke discredits, but which numerous testimonies place beyond any doubt. I quote only the most important, waiving the presents which Perez had received from the princess, and which he was condemned to give back by a decree of justice."

It is too late now, we join M. Mignet in believing, to doubt or even to decry the personal charms of the Princess of Eboli, which the misty delirium of the poet may have magnified, or the expedient boldness of the romancer too voluptuously emblazoned, but which more than one grave annalist has calmly commemorated.[4 - "Dona Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda," observes the historian of the house of Silva, "the only daughter of Don Diego de Mendoza and the Lady Catalina de Silva, was, from the blood which ran in her veins, from her beauty, and her noble inheritance, one of the most desirable matches (apeticidos casamientos) of the day!"] We shall not, however, venture to decide the nice question which oscillates between an obliquity and a loss of vision. The Spanish word "tuerto" means, ordinarily, "blind of one eye." And there is an answer which M. Mignet probably considers apocryphal, as he does not allude to it, said to have been made by Perez to Henry IV. of France, who expressed surprise that he should be so much the slave of a woman that had but one eye. "Sire," replied the ingeniously gallant Perez, "she set the world on fire with that; if she had preserved both, she would have consumed it." It is of little consequence. Any slight physical blemish or imperfection was more than counterbalanced by the wit and accomplishments of this seductive woman, whose enchantments, like those of Ninon de l'Enclos, defied the impairing inroads of old age.

It is unnecessary here to repeat or analyse the powerful concatenation of proofs by which her criminal intimacy with Perez is established. We may frankly admit, nevertheless, that the first perusal of the evidence did not convince us. The probability was strong that much would be exaggerated, perverted, and invented, before a partial tribunal, in order to annihilate a disgraced courtier, a fallen and helpless enemy. But the reasons which appear conclusively to fix culpability, will be better understood when the facts of the case are stated. Every witness must be branded with perjury to entitle us to doubt that the familiarity of Perez with the princess had attracted observation. Escovedo was aware of it, saw it, and denounced it. He remonstrated with both parties on their guilt and on their danger. The appeals to conscience and to fear were of unequal force. The guilt of their conduct was not likely to excite, in a couple abandoned to the indulgence of a mutual and violent passion, any emotion except anger against the honesty and audacity which rebuked them. By a grave discourse on breaches of decorum and morality, Escovedo ran the risk of being considered – what the princess actually declared him to be – a rude fellow and a bore. But the danger of their profligacy was a more delicate and ominous text for censure. In the peril of any public exposure was involved an additional complication of guilt. Perez was not the only favoured votary of the versatile siren. His rival, or rather his partner, was – Philip of Spain! The revelation of promiscuous worship, threatened by Escovedo, sounded like a knell to Perez and the princess. Was it a mad defiance, or a profound prescience, of the consequences, which, when Escovedo, stung on one occasion beyond forbearance by the demonstration of iniquity which Othello in his agony demands of Iago, declared loudly his purpose of divulging every thing to the king? – was it, we say, the fury or the shrewdness of despair which then drew from the lady a reply of outrageous and coarse effrontery? The irrecoverable words being spoken, we think, with M. Mignet, that "the ruin of Escovedo, whose indiscretions were becoming formidable, was doubtless sworn, from this moment, by Perez and the princess."

We shall now, with some consciousness of superiority over the German, Feuerbach, whose common-place murders are flavourless for us, (who were fellow-citizens of Burke, and rode in an omnibus with Greenacre, just as Bacon had Perez for a coach-companion,) transcribe the minute continuous narrative of the assassination of Escovedo, taken down from the lips of Antonio Enriquez, the page and familiar of Antonio Perez: —

"'Being one day at leisure in the apartment of Diego Martinez the major-domo of Antonio Perez, Diego asked me whether I knew any of my countrymen who would be willing to stab a person with a knife. He added, that it would be profitable and well paid, and that, even if death resulted from the blow, it was of no consequence. I answered, that I would speak of it to a mule-driver of my acquaintance, as in fact I did, and the muleteer undertook the affair. Afterwards, Diego Martinez gave me to understand, with rather puzzling reasons, that it would be necessary to kill the individual, who was a person of importance, and that Antonio Perez would approve of it; on this I remarked that it was not an affair to be trusted to a muleteer, but to persons of a better stamp. Then Diego Martinez added, that the person to be killed often came to the house, and that, if we could put any thing in his food or drink, we must do so; because that was the best, surest, and most secret means. It was resolved to have recourse to this method, and with all dispatch.

"'During these transactions, I had occasion to go to Murcia. Before my departure, I spoke of it to Martinez, who told me I should find, in Murcia, certain herbs well adapted to our purpose; and he gave me a list of those which I was to procure. In fact, I sought them out and sent them to Martinez, who had provided himself with an apothecary, whom he had sent for from Molina in Aragon. It was in my house that the apothecary, assisted by Martinez, distilled the juice of those herbs. In order to make an experiment of it afterwards, they made a cock swallow some, but no effect followed; and what they had thus prepared, was found to be good for nothing. The apothecary was then paid for his trouble, and sent away.

"'A few days after, Martinez told me he had in his possession a certain liquid fit to be given to drink, adding that Antonio Perez, the secretary, would trust nobody but me, and that, during a repast which our master was to give in the country, I should only have to pour out some of this water for Escovedo, who would be among the guests, and for whom the preceding experiments had already been tried. I answered, that unless my master himself gave me the order, I would not have a hand in poisoning any body. Then the secretary, Anthony Perez, called me one evening in the country, and told me how important it was for him that the secretary Escovedo should die; that I must not fail to give him the beverage in question on the day of the dinner: and that I was to contrive the execution of it with Martinez; adding, moreover, good promises and offers of protection in whatever might concern me.

"'I went away very contented, and consulted with Martinez as to the measures to be taken. The arrangement for the dinner was as follows: entering the house by the passage of the stables, which are in the middle, and advancing into the first room, we found two side-boards, one for the service of plates, and the other for that of the glasses, from which we were to supply the guests with drink. From the said room, on the left, we passed to that where the tables were laid, and the windows of which looked out on the country. Between the room where they were to dine, and that where the side-boards stood, was a square room, serving as an antechamber and passage. Whilst they were eating, I was to take care that every time the secretary Escovedo asked for drink, I should be the person to serve him. I had thus the opportunity of giving him some twice; pouring the poisoned water into his wine at the moment I passed through the antechamber, about a nutshell-full, as I had been ordered. The dinner over, secretary Escovedo went away, but the others remained to play, and Antonio Perez having gone out for a moment, rejoined his major-domo and me in one of the apartments over the court-yard, where we gave him an account of the quantity of water that had been poured into secretary Escovedo's glass; after which, he returned to play. We heard, afterwards, that the beverage had produced no effect.

"'A few days subsequent to this ill success, secretary Antonio Perez gave another dinner in what is called Cordon House, which belonged to the count of Punoñ Rostro, where secretary Escovedo, Dona Juana Coëllo, the wife of Perez, and other guests, were present. Each of them was served with a dish of milk or cream, and in Escovedo's was mixed a powder like flour. I gave him, moreover, some wine mixed with the water of the preceding dinner. This time it operated better, for secretary Escovedo was very ill, without guessing the reason. During his illness, I found means for one of my friends, the son of captain Juan Rubio, governor of the principality of Melfi, and formerly Perez's major-domo (which son, after having been page to Dona Juana Coëllo, was a scullion in the king's kitchens), to form an acquaintance with secretary Escovedo's cook, whom he saw every morning. Now, as they prepared for the sick man a separate broth, this scullion, taking advantage of a moment when nobody saw him, cast into it a thimble-full of a powder that Diego Martinez had given him. When secretary Escovedo had taken some of this food, they found that it contained poison. They subsequently arrested one of Escovedo's female slaves who must have been employed to prepare the pottage; and, upon this proof, they hung her in the public square at Madrid, though she was innocent.

"'Secretary Escovedo having escaped all these plottings, Antonio Perez adopted another plan, viz., that we should kill him some evening with pistols, stilettoes, or rapiers, and that without delay. I started, therefore, for my country, to find one of my intimate friends, and a stiletto with a very thin blade, a much better weapon than a pistol for murdering a man. I travelled post, and they gave me some bills of exchange of Lorenzo Spinola at Genoa, to get money at Barcelona, and which, in fact, I received on arriving there.'

"Here Enriquez relates, that he enticed into the plot one of his brothers, named Miguel Bosque, to whom he promised a sum of gold and the protection of Perez; that they arrived at Madrid the very day Escovedo's slave was hanged; that, during his absence, Diego Martinez had fetched from Aragon, for the same object, two resolute men, named Juan de Mesa and Insausti; that the very day after his arrival, Diego Martinez had assembled them all four, as well as the scullion Juan Rubio, outside Madrid, to decide as to the means and the moment of the murder; that they had agreed upon this, that Diego Martinez had procured them a sword, broad and fluted up to the point, to kill Escovedo with, and had armed them all with daggers; and that Antonio Perez had gone, during that time, to pass the holy week at Alcala, doubtless with the intention of turning suspicion from him when the death of Escovedo was ascertained. Then Antonio Enriquez adds: —

"'It was agreed, that we should all meet every evening upon the little square of Saint James (Jacobo), whence we should go and watch on the side by which secretary Escovedo was to pass; which was done. Insausti, Juan Rubio, and Miguel Bosque, were to waylay him; while Diego Martinez, Juan de Mesa, and I, were to walk about in the neighbourhood, in case our services should be required in the murder. On Easter Monday, March 31, the day the murder was committed, Juan de Mesa and I were later than usual in repairing to the appointed spot, so that, when we arrived at St James's Square, the four others had already started to lie in ambush for the passing of secretary Escovedo. Whilst we were loitering about, Juan de Mesa and I heard the report that Escovedo had been assassinated. We then retired to our lodgings. Entering my room, I found Miguel Bosque there, in his doublet, having lost his cloak and pistol; and Juan de Mesa found, likewise, Insausti at his door, who had also lost his cloak, and whom he let secretly into his house.'"

The quiet pertinacity which characterizes this deliberate murder adds a creditable chapter to the voluminous "Newgate Calendar" of the sixteenth century. The murderers – first, second, third, and fourth – having executed their commission, were rewarded with a dramatic appreciation of their merits. Miguel Bosque received a hundred gold crowns from the hand of the clerk in the household of Perez. Juan de Mesa was presented with a gold chain, four hundred gold crowns, and a silver cup, to which the Princess of Eboli added, in writing, a title of employment in the administration of her estates. Diego Martinez brought to the three others brevets, signed nineteen days after this deed of blood, by Philip II. and Perez, of alfarez, or ensign in the royal service, with an income of twenty gold crowns. They then smilingly dispersed, as the play directs, "you that way, I this way."

Such blood will not sink in the ground. Instantly, at a private audience granted to him by Philip, the son of Escovedo, impelled by a torrent of universal suspicion, charged his father's death home to Perez. On the same day, Philip communicated to Perez the accusation. No pictorial art, we are sure, could exhibit truly the faces of these two men, speaking and listening, at that conference. This, however, was the last gleam of his sovereign's confidence that ever shone on Perez. His secret and mortal enemy, Mathew Vasquez, one of the royal secretaries, having espoused the cause of the kinsmen of Escovedo, wrote to Philip, "People pretend that it was a great friend of the deceased who assassinated the latter, because he had found him interfering with his honour, and on account of a woman." The barbed missile flew to its mark, and rankled for ever.

Our limits preclude the most concise epitome of the next twelve years of the life of Perez, of which the protracted tribulations, indeed, cannot be related more succinctly and attractively than they are by M. Mignet. During this weary space of time, Perez, single-handed, maintained an energetic defensive warfare against the disfavour of a vindictive monarch, the oppression of predominant rivals, the insidious machinations and wild fury of relentless private revenge, the most terrific mockeries of justice, the blackest mental despondency, and exquisite physical suffering. Philip II. displayed all his atrocious feline propensities – alternately hiding and baring his claws – tickling his victim to-day with delusions of mercy and protection, in order to smite him on the morrow with heavier and unmitigated cruelty. The truth is, he did not dare to kill, while he had no desire to save. Over and over again, in the course of the monstrous burlesques which were enacted in judicial robes as legal inquiries, did Philip privately, both orally and in writing, exonerate and absolve the murderer. Prosecutors and judges were bridled and overawed – kinsmen were abashed – popular indignation was quelled by reiterated assurances and reports, that the confidential secretary of state had been the passive and faithful executioner of royal commands. Even Uncle Martin, the privileged court-fool, when the flight ultimately of Perez gave general satisfaction, though not to the implacable Philip, exclaimed openly – "Sire, who is this Antonio Perez, whose escape and deliverance have filled every one with delight? He cannot, then, have been guilty; rejoice, therefore, like other people." But the lucky rival – the happy lover, could not expiate his rank offence by any amount of sacrifice in person or estate. According to our view of these lingering scenes of rancorous persecution, Philip gradually habituated himself to gloat over the sufferings of Perez with the morbid rapture of monomania. So long as the wretched man was within his reach, he contemplated placidly the anguish inflicted on him by the unjust or excessive malevolence of his enemies. He repeatedly checked the prosecutions of the Escovedo family, and sanctioned their revival with as little difficulty as if he had never interposed on any former occasion. He relaxed at intervals the rigorous imprisonment under which Perez was gasping for the breath of life, granting him for nearly a twelvemonth so much liberty as to inflate a naturally buoyant temperament with inordinate hope; but, in that very period, instigated and approved of investigations and actions at law, which resulted in reducing Perez, in so far as wealth and honours were concerned, to beggary and rags. He threw into a dungeon Pedro de Escovedo, who talked unreservedly of his desire to assassinate Perez; and refused the fervent entreaties of Perez himself to remove, for a temporary relief, the fetters with which, when his ailing body could scarcely support its own weight, his limbs had been loaded. He sent Perez compassionate and encouraging messages, writing to him, "I will not forsake you, and be assured that their animosity (of the Escovedos) will be impotent against you;" while he regularly transmitted to Vasquez and the Escovedos the information which nourished and hardened their hatred. And finally, having constantly enjoined Perez to take heed that no one should discover the murder to have been perpetrated by the king, Philip, on the ground that he obstinately refused to make a full confession, imperturbably consigned him "to that dreadful proof, the revolting account of which," says M. Mignet, "I will quote from the process itself: " —

"At the same instant, the said judges replied to him that the proofs still remaining in all their force and vigour … they ordered him to be put to the torture to make him declare what the king required; that if he lost his life, or the use of some limbs, it would be his own fault; and that he alone would be responsible. He repeated, once more, his former assertions, and protested, moreover, against the use of torture towards him, for these two reasons: first, because he was of a noble family; and secondly, because his life would be endangered, since he was already disabled by the effects of his eleven years' imprisonment. The two judges then ordered his irons and chain to be taken off; requiring him to take an oath and declare whatever he was asked. Upon his refusal, Diego Ruis, the executioner, stripped him of his garments, and left him only his linen drawers. The executioner having afterwards retired, they told him once more to obey the king's orders, on pain of suffering torture by the rope. He repeated once more that he said what he had already said. Immediately the ladder and apparatus of torture having been brought, Diego Ruis, the executioner, crossed the arms of Antonio Perez, one over the other; and they proceeded to give him one twist of the rope. He uttered piercing cries, saying: Jesus! that he had nothing to declare; that he had only to die in torture; that he would say nothing; and that he would die. This he repeated many times. By this time they had already given him four turns of the rope; and the judges having returned to summon him to declare what they wanted of him, he said, with many shrieks and exclamations, that he had nothing to say; that they were breaking his arm. Good God! I have lost the use of one arm; the doctors know it well. He added with groans: Ah! Lord, for the love of God!.. They have crushed my hand, by the living God! He said, moreover: Señor Juan Gomez, you are a Christian; my brother, for the love of God, you are killing me, and I have nothing to declare. The judges replied again, that he must make the declarations they wanted; but he only repeated: Brother, you are killing me! Señor Juan Gomez, by our Saviour's wounds, let them finish me with one blow!.. Let them leave me, I will say whatever they will; for God's sake, brother, have compassion on me! At the same time, he entreated them to relieve him from the position in which he was placed, and to give him his clothes, saying, he would speak. This did not happen until he had suffered eight turns of the rope; and the executioner being then ordered to leave the room where they had used the torture, Perez remained alone with the licentiate Juan Gomez and the scrivener Antonio Marquez."

The impunity of tyranny was over-strained. The tide of sympathy fluctuated, and ebbed with murmuring agitation from the channel in which it had flowed so long with a steady current. Jesters and preachers uttered homely truths – the nobles trembled – and the people shuddered. With a few intelligible exceptions, there was a burst of general satisfaction when, on the 20th April 1591, two months after his torture, Perez, by the aid of his intrepid and devoted wife – (and shall we be too credulous in adding, with the connivance of his guards?) – broke his bonds, fled from Castile, and set his foot on the soil of independent Aragon.

Let us now, for a moment, reconsider the motives which solve, as they guided, at once the indefensible guilt of Perez, and the malignant perfidy of Philip. The King of Spain unquestionably ordered the murder of Escovedo, and confided its perpetration to the docile secretary. But the death-warrant slumbered for a while in the keeping of the executioner. It was not until Escovedo acquired his perilous knowledge of the debaucheries of Perez and the Princess of Eboli, and had avowed his still more perilous resolution of publishing their frailty in a quarter where detection was ruin, that Perez plied with inflexible diligence artifice and violence, poison and dagger – to satisfy, coincidently, himself and his sovereign. By a similar infusion of emotions, roused by later occurrences, the feelings of Philip towards Perez underwent, after the murder, a radical change. He at first unhesitatingly joined, as we have seen, in rewarding the actual murderers. The tale of the preference lavished by beauty on his minion had not seared his heart-strings. With that revelation came the mood of inexpiable hate. A word from him, uttered with unequivocal emphasis, would have cleared and rescued Perez. Such words, indeed, he pronounced more than once; but never as he would have done, if their effect had been to screen merely the faithful minister of state. The object in their occasional recurrence was one of profound dissimulation. Philip's design was to lull the alarm of Perez, and to recover out of his hands every scrap of written evidence which existed, implicating himself in the death of Escovedo. And it was under an erroneous impression of his efforts having been at length completely triumphant, that he sent Perez to the torture, with a foregone determination of killing him with the sword of justice, as a slanderous traitor, who could not adduce a tittle of proof to support his falsehood.

But the wit of Perez was as penetrating as Philip's, and had avoided the snare. Retaining adroitly, in authentic documents, ample materials for his own defence, and the inculpation of the king, Perez fought undauntedly and successfully his battle, on the charge of Escovedo's murder, before the tribunals of Aragon, which were either ignorant of, or indifferent to, the scandals and personal criminalities inseparably mixed up with the case at Madrid. The retributive justice which had overwhelmed Perez in his person and circumstances in Castile, now descended on the reputation of Philip in Aragon, who was likewise not only obliged to hear of the acquittal of his detested foe by the supreme court there, but necessitated, by the tremendous statements promulgated by Perez as his justification, founded on unimpeachable writings in his possession, to drop and relinquish all legal proceedings.

The bitterness of the cup of woe, however, it had still been in the power of the fierce despot otherwise to deepen. Infuriated by the flight of Perez, the king caused the wife, then pregnant, and the children of the fugitive, to be arrested and cast into the public prison, dragging them "on the day when it is usual to pardon the very worst of criminals, at the very hour of the procession of the penitents on Holy Thursday, with a reckless disregard of custom and decency, among the crosses and all the cortèges of this solemnity, in order that there might be no lack of witnesses for this glorious action." These words we have cited from a famous narrative subsequently published by Perez in England, from which we are also tempted to extract, in relation to the same occurrence, the following passage, full of that energetic eloquence which contributed, among other causes, to win over general commiseration to the writer: —

"'The crime committed by a wife who aids her husband to escape from prison, martyred as he had been for so many years, and reduced to such a miserable condition, is justified by all law – natural, divine and human – and by the laws of Spain in particular. Saul, pursuing David, respected Michal, though she was his daughter, and had even saved her husband from the effects of his wrath. Law – common, civil, and canonical – absolves woman from whatever she does to defend her husband. The special law of Count Fernan Gonzalès leaves her free; the voice and the unanimous decree of all nations exalt and glorify her. If, when her children are in her house, in their chamber, or their cradle, it be proved that they are strangers to every thing, by that alone, and by their age, which excludes them from such confidences, how much more must that child be a stranger to all, which the mother bore in her bosom, and which they thus made a prisoner before its birth? Even before it could be guilty, it was already punished; and its life and soul were endangered, like one of its brothers who lost both when they seized his mother a second time, near the port of Lisbon.' He finishes with these noble and avenging threats: – 'But let them not be deceived; wherever they put them, such captives have, on their side, the two most powerful advocates in the whole world – their innocence and their misfortune. No Cicero, no Demosthenes can so charm the ear, or so powerfully rouse the mind, as these two defenders; because, among other privileges, God has given them that of being always present, to cry out for justice, to serve both as witnesses and advocates, and to terminate one of those processes which God alone judges in this world: this is what will happen in the present case, if the justice of men be too long in default. And let not the debtors of God be too confident about the delay of His judgment; though the fatal term be apparently postponed, it is gradually approaching; and the debt to be paid is augmented by the interest which is added to it down to the last day of Heaven's great reckoning."'

It was not till eight years later, in 1599, when Philip III. sat on the throne of Spain, that the wife and children of Perez regained their liberty, and not till nearly twenty-five later, in 1615, that his children, who had passed their youth in prison, and been legally attainted with their father's degradation without having participated in his offences, were restored to their rank and rights as Spanish nobles.

Baffled in his pursuit of vengeance by the sturdy independence of the civil courts of Aragon, Philip turned his eyes for assistance to a tribunal, of which the jurisdiction had apparently no boundary except its exorbitant pretensions. At the king's bidding, the Inquisition endeavoured to seize Perez within its inexorable grasp. It seized, but could not hold him. The free and jealous Aragonese, shouting "Liberty for ever!" flew to arms, and emancipated from the mysterious oppression of the Holy Office the man already absolved of crime by the regular decrees of justice.

The Inquisition having renewed its attempt, the people, headed and supported by leaders of the highest lineage, condition, and authority in Aragon, increased in the fervour and boldness of their resistance. Their zealous championship of Perez – a most unworthy object of so much generous and brave solicitude – drove them into open insurrection against Philip. The biographer narrates, that when the storm raised by him, and on his account, drew near, Perez escaped across the Pyrenees into France; and the historian records, that when the sun of peace again re-emerged from the tempest, Philip had overthrown the ancient constitution of Aragon, crushed its nobility, destroyed its independence, and incorporated its territory with the Spanish monarchy.

Perez, although compelled to fly, bade farewell for ever to his native land with reluctance. There is something touching in the familiar image which he uses to describe his own condition: "He was like a dog of a faithful nature, who, though beaten and ill-treated by his master and household, is loth to quit the walls of his dwelling." He found at Béarn, in the court of the sister of Henry IV. of France, a resting-place from hardship, but not a safe asylum from persecution. During his brief residence there, three separate attempts to assassinate him were detected or defeated; nor were these the only plots directed against his person. M. Mignet quotes a pleasant variety of the species from the lively pen of Perez himself.

"'When Perez was at Pau, they went so far as to try to make use of a lady of that country, who lacked neither beauty, gallantry, nor distinction; a notable woman, an Amazon, and a huntress; riding, as they say, up hill and down dale. One would have thought they wanted to put to death some new Samson. In short, they offered her ten thousand crowns and six Spanish horses to come to Pau, and form an intimacy with Perez; and, after having charmed him by her beauty, to invite and entice him to her house, in order, some fine evening, to deliver him up, or allow him to be carried off in a hunting party. The lady, either being importuned, or desirous, from a curiosity natural to her sex, to know a man whom authority and his persecutors considered of so much consequence, or, lastly, for the purpose of warning the victim herself, feigned, as the sequel makes us believe, to accept the commission. She travelled to Pau, and made acquaintance with Perez. She visited him at his house. Messengers and love-letters flew about like hail. There were several parties of pleasure; but, in the end, the good disposition of the lady, and her attachment for Perez, gained the victory over interest, that metal of base alloy, which defiles more than any act of love; so that she herself came and revealed to him the machinations from beginning to end, together with the offers made, and all that had followed. She did much more. She offered him her house and the revenue attached to it, with such a warmth of affection, (if we may judge of love by its demonstrations,) that any sound mathematician would say there was, between that lady and Perez, an astrological sympathy.'"

His restless spirit of intrigue, and perhaps a nascent desire, provoked by altered circumstances, of reciprocal vengeance against Philip, hurried Perez from the tranquil seclusion of Béarn to the busy camp of Henry IV. After a long conference, he was sent to England by that monarch, who calculated on his services being usefully available with Queen Elizabeth in the common enterprise against Spain. Then it was that he formed his intimate acquaintance with the celebrated Francis Bacon, in whose company we first introduced him to our readers, and with many other individuals of eminence and note.

"It was during the leisure of this his first residence in London that Perez published, in the summer of 1594, his Relaciones, under the imaginary name of Raphael Peregrino; which, far from concealing the real author, in reality designated him by the allusion to his wandering life. This account of his adventures, composed with infinite art, was calculated to render his ungrateful and relentless persecutor still more odious, and to draw towards himself more benevolence and compassion. He sent copies of it to Burghley, to Lady Rich, sister of the Earl of Essex, to Lords Southampton, Montjoy, and Harris, to Sir Robert Sidney, Sir Henry Unton, and many other personages of the English court, accompanying them with letters gracefully written and melancholy in spirit. The one which he confided to the patronage of the Earl of Essex was at once touching and flattering: – 'Raphael Peregrino,' said he, 'the author of this book, has charged me to present it to your Excellency. Your Excellency is obliged to protect him, since he recommends himself to you. He must know that he wants a godfather, since he chooses such as you. Perhaps he trusted to his name, knowing that your Excellency is the support of the pilgrims of fortune.'"

The dagger of the assassin continued to track his wanderings. And it is, probably, not commonly known, that upon one of the city gates of London, near St Paul's, there might be seen, in 1594, the heads of two Irishmen, executed as accomplices in a plot for the murder of Antonio Perez.

In England, where he was supported by the generosity of Essex, he did not remain very long, having been recalled, in 1594, to France by Henry, who had recently declared war against Philip. At Paris, Perez was received with great distinction and the most flattering attentions, being lodged in a spacious mansion, and provided with a military body-guard. The precaution was not superfluous. Wearing seemingly a charmed life, the dusky spectre of premature and unnatural death haunted him wherever he went or sojourned. Baron Pinilla, a Spaniard, was captured in Paris on the eve of his attempt to murder Perez, put to the torture, and executed on the Place de Grève – thus adding another name to the long catalogue of people, to whom any connexion with, or implication in, the affairs of Perez, whether innocently or criminally, for good or evil, attracted, it might be imagined as by Lady Bacon, from an angry Heaven the flash of calamitous ruin.

His present prosperity came as a brilliant glimpse through hopeless darkness, and so departed. Revisiting England in 1596, he found himself denied access to Essex, shunned by the Bacons, and disregarded by every body. The consequent mortification accelerated his return to France, which he reached, as Henry was concluding peace with Philip, to encounter cold distrust and speedy neglect from the French King. All this was the result of his own incurable double-dealing. He had been Henry's spy in the court of Elizabeth, and was, or fancied himself to be Elizabeth's at Paris. But the omnipotent secretary of state and the needy adventurer played the game of duplicity and perfidy with the odds reversed. All parties, as their experience unmasked his hollow insincerity, shrunk from reliance on, or intercourse with an ambidextrous knave, to whom mischief and deceit were infinitely more congenial than wisdom and honesty. "The truth is," wrote Villeroy, one of the French ministers, to a correspondent in 1605, "that his adversities have not made him much wiser or more discreet than he was in his prosperity." We must confess ourselves unable to perceive any traces of even the qualified improvement admitted by Villeroy.

The rest of the biography of this extraordinary man is a miserable diary of indignant lamentations over his abject condition – of impudent laudations of the blameless integrity of his career – of grovelling and ineffectual efforts and supplications to appease and eradicate the hatred of Philip – and of vociferous cries for relief from penury and famine. "I am in extreme want, having exhausted the assistance of all my friends, and no longer knowing where to find my daily bread," is the terrible confession of the once favourite minister of the most powerful monarch in Europe. He never touched the ground, or even gazed on the distant hills of Spain again. In one of the obscure streets of Paris, in solitude and poverty, he dragged the grief and infirmities of his old age slowly towards the grave; and at length, in the seventy-second year of his age, on a natural and quiet deathbed, closed the troubles of his tempestuous existence.

Such is "this strange eventful history." Such was the incalculable progeny of misery, disgrace, disaster, and ruin, involving himself, his family, countless individuals, and an entire nation, which issued from the guilty love of Perez and the Princess of Eboli.

Antonio Perez and Philip II. By M. Mignet. Translated by C. Cocks, B.L. London: 1846.

RECOLLECTIONS OF A LOVER OF SOCIETY

No. II

1802

All the great people of London, and most of the little, have been kept in a fever of agitation during the last fortnight, by the preparatives for the grand club ball in honour of the peace. Texier had the direction of the fête, and he exhibited his taste to the astonishment of les sauvages Britanniques. Never were seen such decorations, such chaplets, such chandeliers, such bowers of roses. In short, the whole was a Bond Street Arcadia. All the world of the West End were there; the number could not have been less than a thousand – all in fancy dresses and looking remarkably brilliant. The Prince of Wales, the most showy of men every where, wore a Highland dress, such, however, as no Highlander ever wore since Deucalion's flood, unless Donald was master of diamonds enough to purchase a principality. The Prince, of course, had a separate room for his own supper party, and the genius of M. Texier had contrived a little entertainment for the royal party, by building an adjoining apartment in the style of a cavern, after the Gil Blas fashion, in which a party of banditti were to carry on their carousal. The banditti were, of course, amateurs – the Cravens, Tom Sheridan, and others of that set – who sang, danced, gambled, and did all sorts of strange things. The Prince was delighted; but even princes cannot have all pleasures to themselves. Some of the crowd by degrees squeezed or coaxed their way into the cavern, others followed, the pressure became irresistible; until at last the banditti, contrary to all the laws of melodrame, were expelled from their own cavern, and the invaders sat down to their supper. Lords Besborough, Ossulston, and Bedford were the directors of the night; and the foreign ministers declared that nothing in Europe, within their experience, equalled this Bond Street affair. Whether the directors had the horses taken from their carriages, and were carried home in an ovation, I cannot tell; but Texier, not at all disposed to think lightly of himself at any time, talks of the night with tears in his eyes, and declares it the triumph of his existence.

George Rose has had a narrow escape of being drowned. All the wits, of course, appeal to the proverb, and deny the possibility of his concluding his career by water. Still, his escape was extraordinary. He had taken a boat at Palace Yard to cross to Lambeth. As he was standing up in the boat, immediately on his getting in, the waterman awkwardly and hastily shoved off, and George, accustomed as he was to take care of himself, lost his balance, and plumped head foremost into the water. The tide was running strong, and between the weight of his clothes, and the suddenness of the shock, he was utterly helpless. The parliamentary laughers say, that the true wonder of the case is, that he has been ever able to keep his head above water for the last dozen years; others, that it has been so long his practice to swim with the stream, that no one can be surprised at his slipping eagerly along. The fact, however, is, that a few minutes more must have sent him to the bottom. Luckily a bargeman made a grasp at him as he was going down, and held him till he could be lifted into his boat. He was carried to the landing-place in a state of great exhaustion. George has been, of course, obnoxious to the Opposition from his services, and from his real activity and intelligence in office. He is good-natured, however, and has made no enemies. Sheridan and the rest, when they have nothing else to do in the House, fire their shots at him to keep their hands in practice, but none of them have been able to bring him down.

A remarkable man died in June, the well-known Colonel Barré. He began political life about the commencement of the American war, and distinguished himself by taking an active part in the discussion of every public measure of the time. Barré's soldiership impressed its character on his parliamentary conduct. He was prompt, bold, and enterprising, and always obtained the attention of the House. Though without pretensions to eloquence, he was always a ready speaker; and from the rapidity with which he mastered details, and from the boldness with which he expressed his opinions, he always produced a powerful effect on the House. Though contemporary with Burke, and the countryman of that illustrious orator, he exhibited no tendency to either the elevation or the ornament of that distinguished senator; yet his speeches were vigorous, and his diligence gave them additional effect. No man was more dreaded by the minister; and the treasury bench often trembled under the force and directness of his assaults. At length, however, he gave way to years, and retired from public life. His party handsomely acknowledged his services by a retiring pension, which Mr Pitt, when minister, exchanged for the clerkship of the pells, thus disburdening the nation by substituting a sinecure. For many years before his death, Barré was unfortunately deprived of sight; but, under that heaviest of all afflictions, he retained his practical philosophy, enjoyed the society of his friends, and was cheerful to the last. He was at length seized with paralysis, and died.

The crimes of the French population are generally of a melodramatic order. The temperament of the nation is eminently theatrical; and the multitude of minor theatres scattered through France, naturally sustain this original tendency. A villain in the south of France, lately constructed a sort of machinery for murder, which was evidently on the plan of the trap-doors and banditti displays of the Porte St Martin. Hiring an empty stable, he dug a pit in it of considerable depth. The pit was covered with a framework of wood, forming a floor, which, on the pulling of a string, gave way, and plunged the victim into a depth of twenty feet. But the contriver was not satisfied with his attempt to break the bones of the unfortunate person whom he thus entrapped. He managed to have a small chamber filled with some combustible in the side of the pit, which was to be set on fire, and, on the return of the platform to its place, suffocate his detenu with smoke. Whether he had performed any previous atrocities in this way, or whether the present instance was the commencement of his profession of homicide, is not told. By some means or other, having inveigled a stout countrywoman, coming with her eggs and apples to market, into his den, she no sooner trod upon the frame, than the string was pulled, it turned, and we may conceive with what astonishment and terror she must have felt herself plunged into a grave with the light of day shut out above. Fortunately for her, the match which was to light the combustibles failed, and she thus escaped suffocation. Her cries, however, were so loud, that they attracted some of the passers-by, and the villain attempted to take to flight. He was, however, seized, and given into the hands of justice.

An action was lately brought by an old lady against a dealer in curiosities, for cheating her in the matter of antiques. Her taste was not limited to the oddities of the present day, and, in the dealer, she found a person perfectly inclined to gratify her with wonders. He had sold her a model of the Alexandrian library, a specimen of the original type invented by Memnon the Egyptian, and a manuscript of the first play acted by Thespis. These had not exhausted the stock of the dealer: he possessed the skin of a giraffe killed in the Roman amphitheatre; the head of King Arthur's spear; and the breech of the first cannon fired at the siege of Constantinople. The jury, however, thought that the virtuoso having ordered those curiosities, ought to pay for them, and brought in a verdict for the dealer.

The French consul has been no sooner installed, than he has begun to give the world provocatives to war. His legion of honour is a military noblesse, expressly intended to make all public distinction originate in the army; for the few men of science decorated with its star are not to be compared with the list of soldiers, and even they are chiefly connected with the department of war as medical men, practical chemists, or engineers.

His next act was to fix the military establishment of France at 360,000 men; his third act, in violation of his own treaties, and of all the feelings of Europe, was to make a rapid invasion of Switzerland, thus breaking down the independence of the country, and seizing, in fact, the central fortress of the Continent. His fourth act has been the seizure of Piedmont, and its absolute annexation to France. By a decree of the Republic, Piedmont is divided into six departments, which are to send seventeen deputies to the French legislature. Turin is declared to be a provincial city of the Republican territory; and thus the French armies will have a perpetual camp in a country which lays Italy open to the invader, and will have gained a territory nearly as large as Scotland, but fertile, populous, and in one of the finest climates of the south. Those events have excited the strongest indignation throughout Europe. We have already discovered that the peace was but a truce; that the cessation of hostilities was but a breathing-time to the enemy; that the reduction of our armies was precipitate and premature; and that, unless the fears of the French government shall render it accessible to a sense of justice, the question must finally come to the sword.

Schiller's play of the "Robbers" is said to have propagated the breed of highwaymen in Germany. To ramble through the country, stop travellers on the highway, make huts in the forest, sing Bedlamite songs, and rail at priests and kings, was the fashion in Germany during the reign of that popular play. It was said, a banditti of students from one of the colleges had actually taken the road, and made Carl Moor their model. All this did very well in summer, but the winter probably cooled their enthusiasm; for a German forest, with its snow half a dozen feet deep, and the probability of famine, would be a formidable trial to the most glowing mysticism.

But an actual leader of banditti has been just arrested, whose exploits in plunder have formed the romance of Germany for a considerable period. The confusion produced by the French war, and the general disturbance of the countries on both sides of the Rhine, have at once awakened the spirit of license, and given it impunity. A dashing fellow named Schinderhannes, not more than three-and-twenty years of age, but loving the luxuries of life too well to do without them, and disliking the labour required for their possession, commenced a general system of plunder down the Rhine. He easily organized a band, composed, I believe, of deserters from the French and Austrian troops, who preferred wholesale robbery to being shot in either service at the rate of threepence a-day; and for a while nothing could be more prosperous than their proceedings. Their leader, with all his daring, was politic, professing himself the friend of the poor, standing on the best terms with the peasantry, scattering his money in all directions with the lavishness of a prince, and professing to make war only on the nobility, the rich clergy, and the Jew merchants especially – the German Jews being always supposed by the people to be the grand depositories of the national wealth. But this favouritism among the peasantry was of the highest service to his enterprizes. It gave him information, it rescued him from difficulties, and it recruited his troop, which was said to amount to several hundreds, and to be in the highest state of discipline. After laying the country under contribution from Mayence to Coblentz, he crossed the river into Franconia, and commenced a period of enterprize there. But no man's luck lasts for ever. It was his habit to acquire information for himself by travelling about in various disguises. One day, in entering one of the little Franconian towns in the habit of a pedlar, and driving a cart with wares before him, he was recognized by one of the passers-by, whose sagacity was probably sharpened by having been plundered by him. An investigation followed, in which the disguised pedlar declared himself an Austrian subject, and an Austrian soldier. In consequence, he was ordered to the Austrian depôt at Frankfort, where he met another recognition still more formidable. A comrade with whom he had probably quarrelled; for this part of the story is not yet clear, denounced him to the police; and, to the astonishment of the honest Frankforters, it was announced that the robber king, the bandit hero, was in their hands. As his exploits had been chiefly performed on the left bank of the Rhine, and his revenues had been raised out of French property in the manner of a forced loan, the Republic, conceiving him to be an interloper on their monopoly, immediately demanded him from the German authorities. In the old war-loving times, the Frankforters would probably have blown the trumpet and insisted on their privilege of acting as his jailers, but experience had given them wisdom, they swallowed their wrath, and the robber king was given up to the robber Republic. If Schinderhannes had been in the service of France, he would have been doing for the last ten years, on its account, exactly what he had been doing on his own. But unluckily for himself, he robbed in the name of Schinderhannes, and not in the name of liberty and equality; and now, instead of having his name shouted by all France, inserted in triumphant bulletins, and ranked with the Bonapartes and Cæsars, he will be called a thief, stripped of his last rixdollar, and hanged.

An extraordinary instance of mortality has just occurred, which has favoured the conversation of the clubs, and thrown the west end into condolence and confusion for the last twenty-four hours. Colonel O'Kelly's famous parrot is dead. The stories told of this surprising bird have long stretched public credulity to its utmost extent. But if even the half of what is told be true, it exhibited the most singular sagacity. Not having seen it myself, I can only give the general report. But, beyond all question, it has been the wonder of London for years, and however willing John Bull may be to be deluded, there is no instance of his being deluded long. This bird's chief faculty was singing, seldom a parrot faculty, but its ear was so perfect, that it acquired tunes with great rapidity, and retained them with such remarkable exactness, that if, by accident, it made a mistake in the melody, it corrected itself, and tried over the tune until its recollection was completely recovered. It also spoke well, and would hold a kind of dialogue almost approaching to rationality. So great was its reputation that the colonel was offered £500 a-year by persons who intended to make an exhibition of it; but he was afraid that his favourite would be put to too hard work, and he refused the offer, which was frequently renewed. The creature must have been old, for it had been bought thirty years before by the colonel's uncle, and even then it must have had a high reputation, for it was bought at the price of 100 guineas. Three remarkable bequests had been made by that uncle to the colonel, – the estate of Canons, the parrot, and the horse Eclipse, the most powerful racer ever known in England; so superior to every other horse of his day, that his superiority at length became useless, as no bets would be laid against him. In the spirit of vague curiosity, this parrot was opened by two surgeons, as if to discover the secret of his cleverness; but nothing was seen, except that the muscles of the throat were peculiarly strong; nothing to account for its death was discovered.