inquiries concerning an event
The diction Victor uses suggests that it is less having to inform mutual
friends of Clerval's death than his sense of culpability for it, with the
attendant need to exonerate himself, that drives him to avoid his English
acquaintance, and perhaps some in France as well. However we construe his
hesitancy, Victor's total rerouting of his itinerary here is of a piece
with his progressive withdrawal from human society and normative social
obligations.
