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Brummel himself asked the name of his laundress, and would probably have employed her had not misfortunes compelled that great man to fly the country. Pendennis's coat, his white gloves, his whiskers, his very cane, were perfect of their kind as specimens of the costume of a military man en retraite.
Me de Bouflers told me que je m etois menage une tres jolie retraite, and indeed at this time it is particularly comfortable to me, and the circumstance of Caroline having a house so near is not by any means the least of its agremens. . . . Monday. Yesterday was a fine day, but neither news or event; on the Thames une bourgeoisie assez nombreuse, and in the Gardens.
On his way over to Folkestone, Major Alan Hawke mused over his great coup, as he lay at ease, wrapped up in a traveling rug, and now resplendent in a fur-trimmed top coat, befrogged and laced, which indicated the officer en retraite.
It is only half an hour's walk from my house to Pont-aux-Dames, where Coquelin set up his maison de retraite for aged actors, and where he died and is buried.
And in that 'Retraite Infernale, as one of its historians has called it, I saw want, hunger, cupidity, cruelty, disease, stalking beside the war fiend; so no wonder that, like Zola, I regard warfare as the greatest of abominations that fall upon the world.
It was quickly over, and seizing the flambeaux, all rushed from the Place du Gouvernement, lighting the way of the retraite, now more furious even than planned. The band struck up, "There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night," the drum and bugle made warlike notes, and down the rue de Rivoli we went madly toward the conflagration sighted by the leader.
A polka was begun, and couples danced upon the grass, the ladies in their peignoirs, their black hair floating, and their lips chanting, their wreaths and flowers nodding to their motions. In retired nooks where the lamp-lights did not penetrate ardent ones threw themselves into the postures and agitations of the upaupa, the hula. Boys now began to light the flambeaux for the retraite.
A garden below the windows, surrounded by a low iron grating, and called the garden of the Count de Paris, had just been closed for the night; the sound of the drums beating the retraite was already dying in the distance; the crowd had all withdrawn, and yet one solitary figure still remained, leaning disconsolately against the railing, gazing wistfully into the garden, and every now and then casting furtive glances up at the balcony into which opened the window of the apartment occupied by the Duchess of Orleans.
"Monsieur is a captain in the Guards," said he, proudly; "no more is necessary." "You mistake, friend, I am no longer so; I have left the army." "Left it, en retraite?" said he, inquiringly. "Not so; left it at my own free will and choice.
When one has become very old one finds it extremely difficult to disappear. Nevertheless, it is time, as the old song says, 'de prendre ma retraite et de songer a faire un fin" to retire on my pension and prepare myself to die a good death.
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