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."