My own feeling of loneness, of desolation, was not relieved by my release of the woman I had so long held spell-bound, but was aggravated by the constant annoyance of a passion which I had seldom before experienced, or which, without much trouble, I had always been able to subdue. As Priscilla became purified and less unworthy of her husband, and as she seemed the more completely to have escaped me and to be lost to me forever, the more did I feel that I could not live without her, and the more impossible did I find it quietly to endure her absence. I was mad. I called her. The charm was broken, and she came not; I saw only a vague, undefined form, flit before my eyes, and heard only a wild mocking laugh. Weeks passed, but they seemed ages. Priscilla, in all her loveliness, in all her gracefulness and dignity, in all the brilliancy of youth and beauty, was constantly present to my morbid fancy by day, and to my dreams at night. I was completely unmanned,—wept now as a child over a lost toy, or now raved as a madman. I could not eat, I could not sleep. I could endure it no longer. I sold my house and furniture, disposed of my laboratory and scientific apparatus, packed up my library, and resolved that henceforth I would take up my residence in Philadelphia. I had no sooner established myself in my new home, than I called in Arch street to see Priscilla. Instead of her I found James. He received me civilly, even kindly, conversed with me of what we had seen abroad, but Priscilla did not appear. No matter, I would call again. Did so; saw Priscilla only in presence of her husband. She was looking well, was affectionate in her tone and manner, but offered me not her hand, and seemed to take care that I should not so much as touch her dress. Well, said I to myself, be it so. The weakness shall last no longer. I will be myself again, and resume the project I had contemplated. I went home, not cured, but resolved, and immediately commenced my evocation, and communicated my orders to all the circles I had established throughout Europe. I have already hinted what this new project was. It was clear to me, from my historical reading and my personal observations amid the exciting scenes of the more recent European revolutions, that the grand support of social order, and what I have somewhere called the system of restraint and repression, is Christianity, and that the political and social reformers can never fully carry out their reforms till they have totally rooted out from modern society all belief in the Gospel, and all peculiar reverence for its Author. This is more than hinted by Mazzini and Kossuth, although the latter is a vice-president of the American Bible Society, boldly avowed by M. Proudhon, and stoutly contended for by the German Turnverein and Freimänner. If you concede the Christian idea of God, says Proudhon, you must at once and forever abandon your idea of liberty.