I must own that I thought the circumstances excused him.
On the previous evening, we had consulted the German newspapers at the coffee-house, and had found news from Wurzburg which quite overwhelmed my excitable friend.
Being called upon to deliver their judgment, the authorities presiding at the legal inquiry into the violation of the seals and the loss of the medicine-chest failed to agree in opinion, and thus brought the investigation to a most unsatisfactory end.

The moral effect of this division among the magistrates was unquestionably to cast a slur on the reputation of Widow Fontaine.

She was not pronounced to be guilty--but she was also not declared to be innocent.

Feeling, no doubt, that her position among her neighbors had now become unendurable, she and her daughter had left Wurzburg.

The newspaper narrative added that their departure had been privately accomplished.