If anyone on the Sinn Féin benches was tempted to chuckle as the first new-Stormont Minister bit the dust, they refrained, at least in public, writes Fionnuala O Connor.
The old-style, control-freak, militaristic discipline may have slackened, but these are people aware of how far they have come. The unspoken maxim is that nothing should betray glee at how they have relegated bloodstained history and left behind muck and bullets. Proper pride is the desired effect. Gloating over the misfortune of others would be unwise.
If no Sinn Féin figures have as yet been tempted into financial or other shenanigans that would look bad in the spotlight, someone will be soon. And in the meantime, today's dominant northern republicans have enough flashbacks to contend with, some of very recent happenings indeed. The clanking chains of past militarism are not that easy to recycle. The Gerry Adams driver exposed as a security services agent held external interest for only a day or two: SF ranks stay braced for more revelations.
Discussion of DUP and Paisley family fortunes took the limelight last Monday but next day the grieving family of Paul Quinn came to Stormont to witness a debate condemning his murder.
Believing he was beaten to death last October because he crossed a local IRA figure, the family is furious that local Sinn Féin MP, MLA and Minister, Conor Murphy, like SF president Adams, instantly depicted the killing as a falling out between diesel smugglers.
The debate was an inconclusive affair in which the other parties agreed that Murphy should recant. Sinn Féin stayed quiet for the vote while the rest chorused "Aye". With the Quinns and friends in the public gallery, republican behaviour was muted, sulky, full of sniping at Dominic Bradley, the south Armagh SDLP man who proposed the debate and has voiced much local outrage. Unionists made hay, as well they might, heaping coals of praise on Bradley and mockery on republicans. Those who warned that the Quinn murder could end DUP consent to powersharing also minded their words. There was no sense of an impending decision to walk out of Stormont.
Minister Murphy arrived late, made a terse, graceless little speech and left before the vote. Neither Adams nor Martin McGuinness were present. The Sinn Féin leader spent most of the day on the Falls, attending the funeral of Brendan Hughes, the former close friend who led the IRA in Belfast at the height of 1970s violence and made no secret of his disgust at the shift to politics. Hughes and Adams were arrested together and put in the same jail cell. Then came the decades when Adams polished up his tireless denial of IRA membership, and Hughes's last broken days when he called the Adams leadership "a class of professional liars". But Adams was reputedly at his deathbed, and on Tuesday on the Falls where they both grew up, helped carry his coffin.
Deputy First Minister and former IRA leader McGuinness, meanwhile, was in Edinburgh in a delegation including both Paisleys. Before the recent long honeymoon, McGuinness had years of experience in stonewalling questioners. Now he sat by while his unlikely partner faced the media, supportive smile at the ready. What else? The former IRA man may be the most likely to see unkind irony in the spectacle of someone else who has put aside the virulence of a lifetime, decided to be valiant or at least benign for peace, but is now marooned by a current of minor seediness.
Sure enough, the first questioner wanted to know the elder Paisley's feelings about his son's resignation. The mirage of a sweet old man vanished as he slammed the reporter's intentions in the style of his heyday, boasting of his own "rhinoceros" hide. A smile stayed glued to the Deputy First Minister's face, his thoughts unguessable. An Adam-McGuinness exchange on Tuesday evening about their respective days would have been worth listening to.
But perhaps Sinn Féin does not spend much time speculating on the repercussions for themselves from the fluctuating Paisley fortunes. A new DUP leadership will wipe away the chuckling and defer devolution of power over policing, but powersharing is a given.
Many republican supporters - and nationalists in general - are almost as repelled as DUP heartlands by the Paisley-McGuinness roadshow. They also know it goes with the territory, and they like the territory. They have problems to face. On present form these seem unlikely to include a resurgent SDLP in competition for Westminster or Assembly seats. Boring Stormont debates, lacklustre ministers and the compromises budgets impose are recognised as the price of progress. The outing of agents and outrage at the last outcroppings of paramilitary arrogance are seen as the dregs of war.
Creating a new establishment in Northern Ireland is a popular project - enough to hold Sinn Féin together while they bury the past, and gear down the future.