Nicolas Sarkozy, long known as the "man in a hurry" of French politics, has finally calmed down. Yes, the former interior minister has long known how to play calm by slowing his speech and lowering his voice, but the frenetic, impatient and temperamental Sarkozy never seemed far beneath the surface. Today, though, he finally seemed to have achieved serenity as he reached his destination: his inauguration as the sixth president of the republic.

His "arrival" was trumpeted in multiple ceremonies, wreathed in tradition and dusted with the gravitas of France's war-scarred history of occupation, liberation and survival. If the dozens of metal-helmeted guards on horseback, a 21-cannon fire salute and a convertible limousine ride up the Champs-Élysées didn't tell him that he'd finally made it, perhaps it was his private meeting with outgoing President Jacques Chirac, when the new president was given France's nuclear "football" codes. As he escorted his predecessor down the red-carpeted steps of the Élysée Palace and to the waiting car that drove Chirac off toward a post-presidential life. Sarkozy waved warmly, and for once appeared genuinely and preternaturally calm.

Perhaps it was simply the satisfaction of achieving a lifelong ambition. Or perhaps it was the gravity of ceremonies--often steeped in clichés of pomp and circumstance à la française, but that conveyed the weight of history nonetheless. Regardless of the reason, Sarkozy's striking serenity as he stood before the eternal flame at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier that flickers beneath Paris' Arc de Triomphe, suggested that he might finally sense, as he says, that he is a part of something bigger than himself. Earlier in the day, he spoke to 500 guests, allies and supporters in the Élysée Palace's salle des fêtes and to millions of French people watching televisions around the nation--in an effort to link the heroic France that survived the epic struggles of the 20th century with the France of 2007, whose more existential challenges spring from the changes that the fast-mutating world economy requires of a nation steeped in tradition. " On May 6 there was only one victory, that of the France that doesn't want to die. - There was one single victor, the French people who don't want to give up." He continued: "I think with solemnity of the mandate that the French people have confided to me - and that I don't have the right to disappoint." Of the mandate he claims, Sarkozy added, "I will scrupulously fulfill it."

Later in the day, Sarkozy was presented with the collie--or necklace--of the National Order of the Légion d'Honneur. The collier is a symbol of the weight of history that will bear down on the new president. Etched onto the weighty 16 gold-link chain are the names of French presidents, now including Sarkozy's. The collier represents the legitimacy that democracy gives to the president and the unity symbolized by the presidency itself. A more elaborate version was originally given to General Charles de Gaulle after the end of World War II, as remembrance for his liberation-era heroism. The front of de Gaulle's chain consists of two crossed swords that ran into a small plaque where a Latin motto is inscribed: Patriam Servando Victoriam Tulit. (In serving the Fatherland, he achieved victory.) Like de Gaulle, there's little doubt that Sarkozy intends to battle for his country . During his brief presidential speech, he promised to "fight" for the nation, in the great Gaullist tradition, and "battle" for a Europe that protects its own, as well as for human rights and against global warming. It is a fight, he says, that will be "drawn out." But such endless international struggles have long proved convenient to French presidents, who use them, de Gaulle-like, to rally the people around their leadership. (Take President Chirac's 2003 push against the US-led drive to war in Iraq; it drove his approval ratings deep into the 80 percentile range.)

The real questions involve the more immediate fight on Sarkozy''s home turf. How will President Sarkozy engage in the nation's defining (domestic) battles: the modernization of the economy, the death match with chronic unemployment (and influential unions), and the rebirth of many disabused immigrant ghettos? He has promised to come out swinging in the first 100 days, and to pass all of his major reforms in just two years, in a country that tends to like change better in theory than in practice. As the clock starts ticking on President Sarkozy, the nation that elected him is about to find out whether their new leader has indeed morphed into a calmer and more grounded man, or whether he is just a man in a hurry who merely paused to catch his breath.