The czar generously gave me the capital of my pension, and I returned to France because, after all, it is there that one dies best—when one is born there; I went on foot, lounging along, regaining my paternal valley, lodging and sleeping in the abbeys to spare my purse, when chance—this time, no," said the chevalier, in a grave and penetrating tone which contrasted greatly with his ordinary language, "oh, this time, no—it was not chance, but the providence of the good God which caused me to meet with your children, my lord; they have brought me here; I fell back in a swoon on a heap of dry leaves on recognizing the duchess, and here I am.
— from A Romance of the West Indies by Eugène Sue

I dropped down on the grass and pondered in my mind the pros and cons of my predicament; and I reasoned that this one wagon had been the one that I had followed the morning before, and had at all times been on my right; that it had intercepted the trail somewhere along the route from where I had discovered the keg, and while walking along rapidly, looking more ahead than otherwise, I had not noticed it when it came into the one I was on.
— from The Border and the Buffalo: An Untold Story of the Southwest Plains The Bloody Border of Missouri and Kansas. The Story of the Slaughter of the Buffalo. Westward among the Big Game and Wild Tribes. A Story of Mountain and Plain by John R. Cook

I called on Mr. Peel as I returned home, and after that on Lord Melville.
— from The Journal of Sir Walter Scott From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford by Walter Scott