The night the Assembly had its first meeting, one noticed couples in evening dress emerging from the Europa, once famed as the mostbombed hotel in the world. Young women kicked off their shoes and sauntered with their escorts up Great Victoria Street, past the loyalist heartland of Sandy Row, whose residents slept soundly despite the chants of betrayal in their ears.
You would never think from their relaxed demeanour that these couples had grown up in a society riven by hate and violence. Presumably they were thinking the thoughts that people of that age-group have always thought, and will think eternally. One couldn't help recalling the flat tones of Van Morrison's Coney Island: Wouldn't it be great if it was like this all the time?
It has been a strange week. People were walking on eggshells and opening champagne bottles at the same time. For the parties supporting the peace process, the first day of the Assembly was a dream debut. David Trimble's supposed dissidents toed the party line. In the immortal phrase of the late Jim Kemmy TD in another political context: Mighty Mouse became Church Mouse.
As he did over the Presidency, John Hume kept everyone guessing, but then, in almost identical phrasing, he announced his name would not be on the dream ticket with David Trimble. Having apparently failed to check his messages, Seamus Mallon arrived at Stormont in the morning to be told to "go where glory waits thee" at the SDLP conclave in the Wellington Park Hotel.
Day one of the Assembly was notable for the comparatively restrained behaviour of anti-agreement members. A small handful of them could have turned the place into Donnybrook Fair, but they didn't. This suggests a political calculation that such behaviour will not wash with the Northern Ireland people and won't win back those unionists, many of them middle-class, who strayed from the One True Path by voting for the agreement.
Lord Alderdice has a vociferous way of propounding his political views that makes him unpopular with rivals, but he proved equal to the task of chairing this momentous event. Whatever his political fate over the coming months, it will stand to him that he made a disparate and fractious choir sing more or less in tune for the Assembly's opening performance.
The room chosen for the first meeting was but a temporary home. One suspects the Big House on the hill, site of the old Stormont Parliament, will be the permanent location. Nationalists like to recite the misdeeds of the Stormont regime, but there is a certain pride now in taking possession of what used to be enemy territory.
There was a notable lack of symbols for the first meeting, and this was hardly an accident. There was a shirtsleeved informality about the proceedings which will, one profoundly hopes, survive the formal transfer of powers next spring.
Whatever the downside of working as a journalist in Northern Ireland, there is little risk of being temporarily blinded by the flashing smiles of the politicians. The poor devils generally have little enough reason to be cheerful but, for some of them, Wednesday was an exception. David Trimble, for example, looked as if had won the Lotto, the Nobel Prize and a season ticket to La Scala all at the same time.
It was the same when Tony Blair arrived on Thursday night. As he shook hands with Mr Trimble, one feared his boyish features would dissolve, so broad was his grin. Even he, ever at the centre of events, with his finger on everyone's pulse, confessed he had to pinch himself to believe it was real.
Of course, there is still the business of the executive. The clever people who designed the Belfast Agreement sought to paint everyone into a corner on this one. Membership of the executive is automatic, subject to the number of seats your party has won and the number of portfolios, generally expected to be 10, in addition to First Minister and Deputy First Minister.
The DUP would be foolish to give up its entitlement to two executive posts, especially since this could let in another nationalist, but holding on to them means having to contend with the likelihood that Sinn Fein will also have two ministers. For their part, the Ulster Unionists have stuck with this process through thick and thin, but sitting at a cabinet table with Sinn Fein is still a daunting prospect for many of them. Meanwhile - because there's always a meanwhile in Northern Ireland politics - the Drumcree crisis loomed all week, its shadow growing bigger with every news bulletin and every hardline press release.
It was hard to believe a whole year could have gone by without any apparent progress. We knew that religious and political leaders were working in the background to try to bring the two sides together, and hopes rose with the arrival of Tony Blair, only to fade again when he left earlier than expected.
But at time of writing the news is more positive. A last-ditch attempt to break the impasse is under way. Maybe the flickering candle of the new democracy will make it through the weekend after all.