RET 
have bought, ye shall have your return in merchandize or 
old. Bacon. —Profit; advantage.—The fruit, from many 
ays of recreation, is very little; but from these few hours we 
spend in prayer, the return is great. Bp. Taylor. —Remit¬ 
tance ; payment from a distant place. 
Within these two months, I do expect return 
Of thrice three times the value of this bond. Shakspcare. 
Repayment; retribution; requital. 
You made my liberty your late request, 
Is no return due from a grateful breast ? 
I grow impatient, till I find some way, 
Great offices, with greater to repay. Dryden. 
Act of restoring or giving back; restitution.—The other 
ground of God’s sole property in any thing, is the gift, or 
rather the return of it made by man to God. South. —Re¬ 
lapse.—This is breaking into a constitution to serve a present 
expedient; the remedy of an empiric, to stifle the present 
pain, but with certain prospect of sudden returns. Swift .— 
[Retour, Fr.] Either of the adjoining sides of the front of 
an bouse, or ground-plot, is called a return side. Moxon. 
-—Report; account: as, the sherifFs return. To this sense 
also perhaps may be referred the return of Members of Par¬ 
liament. Mason.— The members returned are the sitting 
members, until the House of Commons, upon petition, shall 
adjudge the, retui-n to be false and illegal. Blackstone. — 
[In law.] Certain days in every term are called return- days, 
or days in bank; and so Hilary term hath four returns. 
Cowel. —On some one of these days in bank all original writs 
are returnable, and therefore they are generally called the re¬ 
turns of that term. Blackstone. 
RET U'RN ABLE, adj. Allowed to be reported back. A 
law term.—It may be decided in that court, where the ver¬ 
dict is returnable. Hale. 
RETU'RNER, s. One who pays or remits money.—The 
chapmen, that gave highest for this, can make most profit by 
it, and those are the returners of our money. Locke. 
RETU'RNLESS, adj. Admitting no return; irremeable. 
But well knew the troth 
Of this thine owne returne, though all my friends, 
1 knew as well should make return/esse ends. Chapman. 
RETURNQ Habendo, or Returnum averiorum, in Law, 
a writ which lies for him who has avowed a distress made of 
cattle, and proved his distress to be lawfully taken; for the 
return of the cattle distrained unto him, which before were 
replevied by the party distrained, upon surety given to pur¬ 
sue the action. 
RETUSARI, an island of the gulf of Finland, on the 
south-east extremity of which the town of Cronstadt was 
built by Peter the Great. See Cronstadt. 
RETUSUM Folium, in Botany, a retuse or abrupt leaf 
which terminates bluntly, with a broad shallow notch, as in 
rumex digynus, or mountain sorrel. 
RETY, a town in the north-east of France, department of 
the Pas de Calais, with 1000 inhabitants. In the neighbour¬ 
hood there are coal pits and stone quarries. 
RETZ (John-Francis Paul de Gondi), Cardinal de, a 
celebrated political character, born at Montmirel in 1614, 
was the son of Phillip-Emanuel de Gondi, general of the 
gallies, descended from a Florentine family. His father 
obliged him against his inclination to embrace the ecclesi¬ 
astical profession, and he was placed under the tuition of 
the famous Vincent de Paule. Several abbacies were con¬ 
ferred upon him at an early age; and in 1G27 his uncle, the 
Archbishop of Paris, presented him to a canonry of Notre 
Dame. He passed through his course of study with dis¬ 
tinction, and was made a doctor of the Sorbonne, in 1643, 
in which year he was nominated coadjutor to the Arch¬ 
bishop of Paris. Nothing, however, could be less ecclesi¬ 
astical than his character and conduct. He fought duels, and 
entered into every species of debauchery, and his most 
serious occupation was political intrigue. At the age of 23 
he 1 was the soul (says Voltaire) of a conspiracy against the life 
erf Cardinal Richelieu. The ministry of Mazarin, however, 
RET 23 
was the period of his great party consequence, and he en¬ 
gaged deeply in all the factious cabals which produced the 
petty civil war of the Fronde. He imposed upon the people 
by a feigned devotional seriousness in performing his pre- 
latical functions, and affected the utmost zeal for the privi¬ 
leges of the clergy and the good of the public. That vanity, 
ambition, and a restless turbulence of spirit, solely actuated 
him on this occasion, is evident from the general tenor of his 
life. He was among the most violent of the opposers of the 
court, and once took his seat in the parliament with a poniard 
in his pocket, the handle of which appearing, a man of 
pleasantry, said, “ There is our Archbishop’s breviary.” 
It was he, according to his own boast, who induced the 
Parisians to arm on the day of the barricades; and for a 
considerable time he was the Catiline of his sedition. At 
length he found that the interests of his ambition would be 
better served by making a secret accommodation with the 
court; and so much importance was ascribed to his influ¬ 
ence, that he was purchased by a cardinalate, to which he 
was nominated by the King in 1651. Like other deserters, 
however, he lost his popularity, and thenceforth acted only 
a secondary part on the political stage. He governed the 
Duke of Orleans, who was opposed to the Prince of Conde;. 
and continuing his cabals, Mazarin, who both nated and 
feared him, procured his arrest at the Louvre. He was im¬ 
prisoned in the castle of) Vincennes, whence he was trans¬ 
ferred to Nantes. From the latter prison he made his escape 
to Spain, and thence went to Rome, where he was received 
with distinction as the enemy of Mazarin. He was present 
at the election of Alexander VII.; but finding the pope 
cool to his interests, he left Italy, and passed some years in 
wandering through Holland, Flanders, and England. 
Wearied with a life of exile, he returned to France in 1661, 
after Mazarin’s death, and made his peace with the court by 
the renunciation of his archbishopric (to which he had suc¬ 
ceeded on the death of his uncle), obtaining the abbacy of 
St. Denis by way of recompence. He had hitherto lived 
with great magnificence, which had plunged him into debt, 
but he now honourably resolved to live upon 20,000 livres 
a year till he had satisfied his creditors. This he at length 
effected by payments amounting to 1,110,000 crowns, and 
lived to be in circumstances to give pensions to his indigent 
friends. In 1675 he sent back his cardinal’s hat to Clement X. 
with the intention of absolutely retiring from the world, but 
the Pope refused to accept it. It has been asserted, indeed, 
that he did not quit the world till it had quitted him, and 
that disappointed ambition rather than devotion was the mo¬ 
tive of his retreat. His conduct, however, in the 'atter part 
of life, obtained him the esteem of men of worth; and he 
died regretted at Paris in 1679, at the age of 66. 
The character of the Cardinal de Retz has been drawn by 
several eminent writers, who agree in the principal features 
of the portrait. Daring, turbulent, false, intriguing, with 
designs rather romantic than great, and conducted rather 
with dexterity than ability, he seenls to have been exactly 
fitted for the part he sustained of a political meteor in trouble¬ 
some times among a frivolous aud licentious people. Mar- 
montel enquires whether de Retz would have been a greater 
man on a grander theatre ? and inclines to the negative: 
“ the tragi-comedy of the Fronde (says he) seems to have 
been made on purpose for this tragi-comic actor.” He has 
been thought, however, a great master in party politics; 
and his own “ Memoirs,” which have been frequently 
rinted have been considered as highly instructive in the 
nowledge of mankind. “ These Memoirs (says Voltaire) 
are written with an air of greatness, an impetuosity of genius, 
and an inequality, which are the image of his conduct. He 
composed them in his retreat with the impartiality of a plri- 
losopher, but of one who has not always been a philosopher. 
He neither spares himself nor others. He gives portraits cf 
all those who acted a considerable part in the intrigues of the 
Fronde, which are often very natural, but sometimes spoilt 
by a remnant of vanity, acrimony, and enthusiasm, and 
are too much loaded with antitheses. The style is incorrect, 
and sometimes awkward and embarrassed.” Several other 
writings 
