Nobody cried. There were no surprises. Apart from Bertie Ahern's lap of honour around the Castle yard with his successful candidate - "Fianna Fail triumphalism", sniffed one opposition deputy - it was a curiously emotionless couple of hours in Dublin Castle.
"Last time was different. It was a very real departure from the past. Today, there was a sense of continuity, a sense that nothing much had changed . . . one female Presidency flowing seamlessly into another," said one underwhelmed male TD.
"And that's the danger," said a female counterpart. "Where's the novelty? What can Mary McAleese do for her next trick? Where's the wonder?"
But there was some - at a personal level, at any rate. After all, this was a woman who only a couple of weeks ago was virtually pinioned to the bridge of Athlone, an exasperated media holding a dozen microphones and tape-recorders inches from her face; a woman who was verbally pistol-whipped on RTE's Prime Time; a woman whose candidacy triggered paroxysms in certain sectors, North and South.
Yet, suddenly, here she was in all her regal bearing and castellated neckline, fixed smile in place, a cast of thousands to do her bidding. Ranged around her were the most prominent clerics and dignitaries the State could muster, while the Chief Justice held the seal which would confirm her as holder of the highest office in the land.
Untouchable. Never again - or for seven years, anyway - to have a microphone shoved in her face. Not since ET, when the children's bicycles suddenly became airborne, has there been such a dramatic rescue from the messy inconveniences of real life.
Henceforth, her world would smell of fresh paint and flowers, wrapped in the flags of awestruck adults and cheering children. Never mind the "cool head/warm heart" appeal of the speech delivered four times a day on the stump.
What the voters wanted clearly, but were loathe to admit to, was a touch of royalty in their Head of State. Like the queen of England, her job will be to radiate mystique, dignity and a willingness to converse with her subjects. And that's what they've got, judging by the stage management of yesterday's ceremonies.
In fact, there was more than a touch of a coronation about the day. It may have lacked top hats and tails and tiaras, but the 26 people drawn from strands of Irish life conjured up memories of the straggle of charity workers following Princess Diana's cortege; the fireworks in the Park an echo of coronation street parties; the 800 screaming schoolchildren a touch of the public adulation traditionally accorded to visiting royalty.
Throw in splashes of Diana's tactile ways - the kisses and hugs for some of the 26 - and the package is nearly complete. "Just wait for the pitch about the landmines," spat a disaffected one.
"Square that," said a Scotswoman, after digesting the 21-gun salute and the singing about manning the "bearna baol" amid the talk of bridge-building and reconciliation. "And no layabout or disgraced bishop among the many and varied strands of Irish life," she added.
Not everyone was smitten either by the President's choice of poets. Clever, certainly, in that they hailed from across the nationalist divide and all were male. But it was a male politician who pointed out evenly that "some might say there are many fine women poets from Emily Dickinson to Eavan Boland".
Others were preoccupied by the same question that exercised many of the same people seven years ago. How could a normal, functioning, intelligent person survive within the strictures of the Aras?
"Has she thought of the next seven years . . . visiting communities?" wondered a senior politician, observing the new President's happy, hand-shaking progress around the Castle yard. "I don't think she has. The glory comes first - then the realisation of what you've done."
Being a member of the opposition, he seemed remarkably happy at the prospect. But he may have underestimated the new President's capacity for keeping herself occupied. There was a point in the campaign, after all, when she pledged to visit every Irish peacekeeping mission in the world. And there were quite a few of them, some of them in pleasingly sunny places.
Meanwhile, the masterstroke of the entire occasion - the 800 school children wired to the moon on cola and donuts - only served to provoke spasms of bitterness in the hearts of Adi Roche supporters. "Imagine the reaction if she had introduced that mob to the inauguration," muttered an opposition Senator. "Imagine the scoffs about lesemajeste if she had suggested that people dress down."
But even without Adi Roche and her dreams of a children's President they were an inspired choice yesterday. Earlier, they turned the arrival of startled dignitaries into a rout with their whistling roars of approval.
Foreign observers drooled at the informality of the scenes in the yard, with schoolchildren squeezing unimpeded through barriers around the main door, chatting to Government ministers, taking pictures and shaking the hand of the new President. As the band launched into Congratulations - "God, next they'll be playing the Birdy Song", said one jaded chap - a little girl looked less than pleased with her handshake: "I wanted to shake Charlie Haughey's hand", she said crossly.
Why? "He's famous, isn't he", she replied witheringly. "Yes, indeed. That he mostly certainly is," murmured a senior Fianna Fail politician beside her, eyes fixed expressionlessly on the middle distance.
The former Taoiseach resembled the ghost of Christmas past amid the happy pomp and celebration. Grey-faced, his eyes even more hooded than before, he waved in a brief, tentative way before stepping into his car, a modern morality tale made flesh. But the children cheered, just as they had applauded Gerry Adams et al to the echo earlier.
Over in a corner, Lord Alderdice spoke hesitatingly, worriedly about the peace talks. He demonstrated no great enthusiasm for the new President's speech. He still goes back, he said, to "the previous Mary's speech". But it was all "very dignified, celebratory, prayerful".
And his views now on the President? "History will be the judge of us all."