He did not, however, betray his dissatisfaction, but devoted himself to his professional duties with greater diligence.  He might still have remained in the Order, his life hid with Christ in God, had not the hierarchy, under pretence of making reforms and restoring the neglected statutes of the Order, brought in such changes for the worse as led him to resolve to leave the order, and the Romish church as well.  Following his convictions, and the advice of a faithful but very cautious clergyman, he betook himself to the territories of Prussia, where, on the 17th of January, 1855, he was received into the national church at Petershain, by Dr. Nowotny, himself formerly a Bohemian priest.  This was not done till great efforts had been made to induce him to change his purpose, and also to get his person into the power of his adversaries.  As he had now left the church of Rome, become an openly acknowledged member of another communion, he thought he might venture to return to his own country.  Taking leave of his Prussian friends, to whom he had greatly endeared himself by his modesty and his lively faith, he went back to Bohemia, with a heart full of peace and joy.

He lived for some time amidst many perplexities, secluded in the house of his parents at Prosnitz, till betrayed by some who dwelt in the same habitation.  On the 6th of March he was taken out of bed, at eight, by the police, and conveyed first to the cloister in Prosnitz, where he suffered much abuse, and from thence to the cloister in Prague.  Here the canon Dittrich, “Apostolical Convisitator of the Order of the Brothers of Mercy,” justified all the inhuman treatment he had suffered, and threatened him with worse in case he refused to recant and repent.  Dittrich not only deprived him of his medical books, but told him that his going over to Protestantism was a greater crime than if he had plundered the convent of two thousand florins.  He was continually dinned with the cry, “Retract, retract!” He was not allowed to see his brother, confined in the same convent, nor other friends, and was so sequestered in his cell as to make him feel that he was forgotten by all the world.

He managed, through some monks who secretly sympathized with him, to get a letter conveyed occasionally to Dr. Nowotny.  These letters were filled with painful details of the severities practised upon him.  In one of them he says, “My only converse is with God, and the gloomy walls around me.”  He was transferred to a cell in the most unwholesome spot, and infested with noisome smells not to be described.  Close by him were confined some poor maniacs, sunk below the irrational brutes.