Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/582

 556 P E R stands about 66 feet above sea-level, on the right bank of the Tet, 7 miles above the point where it falls into the Mediterranean. The streets of Perpignan are narrow and crooked, and the houses have no architectural pretensions. The cathedral of St Jean, in the Third Pointed style, was commenced in 1324 by the bishop of Elne, and carried on by Sancho II., king of Majorca. The chancel, built when Louis XL was master of Roussillon, bears the arms of France. The nave is 259 feet long, 64 wide, and 89 high. The most noteworthy feature in the building is an immense reredos of white marble, begun in 1618 by Bar tholomew Soler of Barcelona. The tomb of Louis de Mont- mor, first French bishop of Elne after the annexation of Roussillon to France, is also worthy of notice ; the black marble sarcophagus is supported by four white marble lions, and surmounted by the recumbent figure of the bishop. The bede- tower, built over a small Romanesque chapel, is crowned by an iron cage which dates from 1742. The Place de la Loge, which derives its name from the Spanish word lonja (market or bazaar), was built in 1396 in a Pointed style suggestive of the Moorish, and was in- Plan of Perpignan. tended for a cloth-exchange. The gate-house adjoining the Narbonne road, built in the time of Louis XL, has elegant turrets. The fortifications of the citadel, which is large enough to contain 2000 men, are of various times. The kings of Majorca had a castle on the terrace commanding the town, of which all that now remains is the keep. The chapel is remarkable as being a mixture of the Romanesque, Pointed, and Moorish styles ; the top of its tower com mands a view of the whole plain of Roussillon, with its flourishing market-gardens and vineyards, overhung on the south-west by Mount Canigou, and bounded by the Corbieres on the north, the Alberes on the south, and the Mediterranean on the east. The ramparts surround ing the citadel are the work of Louis XL, Charles V., and Vauban. The sculptures and caryatides still to be seen on the gateway were placed there by the duke of Alva. Perpignan was the seat of a university founded by the kings of Aragon, and the town still possesses an inter esting museum of sculptures and pictures, where are to be seen the first photographic proofs produced by Daguerre, a natural history collection, and a library containing 30,000 volumes. In one of the squares of the town is the statue of Arago, unveiled in 1879. The manufactures of Perpignan are cloth-making, cork-cutting, tanning, and cooperage, and it has a large trade in wine, brandy, honey, fine wool, fruit, and vegetables. The population in 1881 was 31,735. Perpignan had its origin in a Benedictine monastery, and its name first appears in charters of the 10th century. The place had -PER already grown into a town when Philip the Bold, king of France, died there in 1285, as he was returning from an unsuccessful expedi tion into Aragon. At that time it belonged to the kingdom of Majorca, which was created in 1262, and its sovereigns resided there until, in 1344, that small state reverted to the possession of the kings of Aragon. When Lonis XI. occupied Koussillon as security for money advanced by him to the king of Aragon, Per- pignan resisted the French arms for a considerable time, and only yielded through stress of famine (15th March 1475). Roussillon was restored to Aragon by Charles VIII., and Perpignan was again besieged in 1542 by Francis I., but without success. Later on, however, the inhabitants, angered by the tyranny and cruelty of the Spanish governor, surrendered the town to Louis XIII. The citadel held out until the 9th of September 1642, and the place has ever since belonged to France, to which it was formally ceded by the treaty of the Pyrenees. PERRAULT, CHARLES (1628-1703), the most pro minent author of France in a specially French kind of literature the fairy tale and one of the chief actors in the famous literary quarrel of ancients and moderns, was born at Paris on 12th January 1628. His father, Pierre Perrault, was a barrister, all whose four sons were men of some distinction, Claude, the second, who was first a physician and then an architect, being the best known next to Charles the youngest. The latter was brought up at the College de Beauvais, until he chose to quarrel with his masters, after which (an incident rather rare at the time when patriarchal government of families was in full fashion) he was allowed to follow his own bent in the way of study. He took his degree of &quot;licencie en droit&quot; at Orleans in 1651, and was almost immediately called to the Paris bar, where, however, he practised for a very short time. In 1654 his father bought himself the post of receiver-general at Paris, and made Charles his clerk. After nearly ten years of this employment he was, in 1663, chosen by Colbert as his secretary in a curious and not easily describable office. Put shortly, Perrault s duties were to assist and advise the minister in matters relating to the arts and sciences, not forgetting literature. The protection of Colbert procured a place in the Academic Franchise for his protege in 1671, and Perrault justified his election in several ways. One was the orderly arrange ment of the business affairs of the Academy, another was the suggestion of the custom (which more than anything else has given the institution a hold on the French public) of holding public seances for the reception of candidates. Colbert s death in 1683 put an end to Perrault s official career, but even before that event he had experienced the morose and ungenerous temper which was the great draw back of that very capable statesman. He now gave him self up to literature, in which, like most men of his time, he had made some experiments already. The famous dispute of ancients and moderns is said to have arisen in consequence of some words used by Perrault in one of the regular academic discourses, on which Boileau, with his usual rudeness, commented in violent terms. Perrault, though a very good-natured man, had ideas and a will of his own, and the Parallele des Anciens et des Modernes, which appeared between 1688 and 1696, was the result. The well-known controversy that followed in its train raged hotly in France, passed thence to England, and in the days of La Motte and Fenelon broke out again in the country of its origin. As far as Perrault is concerned, he was inferior to his adversaries in learning, but decidedly superior to them in wit. It is not known what, except the general popularity of the fairy tale in the last decade of the century, drew Perrault to the composition of the only works of his which are still read. The first of them, GriseMdis, which is in verse, appeared in 1691, Peau d Ane and Les Souliaits Ridicules, also in verse, in 1694. But Perrault was no poet, and the merit of these pieces is entirely obscured by that of the prose tales, La Belle au Bois Dormant, Petit Chaperon Rouge, La Barbe JJleue, Le