At the beginning of the story the narrator says "I WAS ill... I saw that the decrees of what was destiny for me... I had been deceived..." (Story Quote.) The story is told in the past tense and shows that the narrator may have remembered or told the story of his past experience This makes sense because at the end of this story the narrator is saved by the French army and personally by the general Lasalle. Narrating in the past from the beginning shows the possible outcome of the future, that everything had already passed and was over