The election was not direct, but in two degrees. The grand electoral college was composed of about six hundred members. Their number, the variety of their social situations, were conditions proper for assuring an independent and intelligent vote. The principle admitted, the election of a bishop,--who, it was required, had served in the diocese for fifteen years,--could be confided with some security to such a reunion of men. It was, however, vitiated by the fact that those most immediately under the authority of the bishop, viz. the clergy, had but a fractional influence in the election. This must be borne in mind when we read of the resignation and apostasy of some of the constitutional bishops during the reign of Terror. Those who had most power in the electoral college were the men of advanced philosophic opinions, whereas those with deep religious sentiment were nowhere. Consequently, in some instances, those were elected bishops whose attachment to the fundamental doctrines of Christianity had been sapped by the dissolvent philosophy of the 18th century. The electoral Assembly was convoked for Sunday, Feb. 13. High mass was celebrated in the cathedral by M. de Corval, curé of Petit-Andely, assisted by M. Rever, curé of Couteville. The service concluded, the procureur-général of the department opened the session, and said to the electors:--'We dispense with recalling to you your duties and obligations. We count on your patriotic zeal, and we are assured that in your selection you will be determined by your judgment as to whom is most worthy of confidence and of the esteem of the public.' The votes were taken, and Thomas Lindet was proclaimed the bishop elect; 238 suffrages were given to him, and 180 to M. Rever. A courier was immediately despatched to Paris to announce the result to Lindet, who at once posted to Évreux, and arrived there before the Assembly dispersed. 'Sir,' said the mayor to him, 'if the department of Eure had known an ecclesiastic more virtuous than you, it would have preferred him to you.' On the 15th of February, the roar of cannons, the ringing of the cathedral and the parish-church bells, announced to the people that they had a new bishop,--a representative of the new law, of liberty, justice, and equality. The arrival at the highest ecclesiastical function of a congruist curé who had not been preceptor or confessor to princes, a man without noble birth or fortune to recommend him, was a spectacle proper to excite the enthusiasm of the nascent democracy. The bishop elect was, however, as yet without canonical confirmation and episcopal consecration. His institution ought to have been asked of the Archbishop of Rouen, his metropolitan, but the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld was out of his see, having refused the oath, and was not yet replaced.