I can assign no reason for my dallying mood.

Perhaps it sprang from the inertness that pervaded me, perhaps some mysterious hand detained me.

Be that as it may, that I remained another night at the Hotel de l'Epee was one of those contingencies which, though slight and seemingly inconsequential in themselves, lead to great issues.

Had I departed that day for Beaugency, it is likely that you had never heard of me--leastways, not from my own pen--for in what so far I have told you, without that which is to follow, there is haply little that was worth the labour of setting down.
In the morning, then, I set out; but having started late, we got no farther than Grenade, where we lay the night once more at the Hotel de la Couronne.

And so, through having delayed my departure by a single day, did it come to pass that a message reached me before it might have been too late.
It was high noon of the morrow.