IT WAS back to business as usual. President Yeltsin was ill enough to be treated for pneumonia in hospital, but healthy enough to keep a steady hand on the tiller of the state.
The sick President was at pains to show himself active in the Central Clinical Hospital by spending 15 minutes on the phone to his Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, and promising to maintaining regular contacts with him, even though the latter is supposed to be on holiday.
The trap is of his own making. Seven weeks after undergoing a quintuple heart by pass operation, and spurning the warnings of his doctors, the 65 year old Russian leader was back at the gates of the Kremlin, telling a television crew he was in "combat mood".
His return to work on December 23rd was presaged by a series of newspaper leaks all promising that important decisions were about to be made: that Mr Chernomyrdin would be replaced by Mr Anatoli Chubais, the man in charge of Presidential administration that both the economics and finance ministers were for the chop; that the Interior Minister, Mr Anatoli Kulikov, would either be sacked or promoted. Nothing of the sort happened.
Mr Yeltsin's traditional New Year address on television was shortened. He looked terrible when he met the German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, in his hunting lodge outside Moscow last Saturday, and from then it was a rapid descent.
He held two short meetings on Monday before all further meetings were cancelled as it was announced he had a "heavy cold". Mr Sergei Yastrzhemski, his press spokesman, said there was nothing unusual about that. Other members of Mr Yeltsin's family had flu. Why hospitalise him?
Late on Wednesday night, the heavy cold became pneumonia and he was back in hospital. If a flu bug has made a nonsense of a President's attempts to grasp back the reins of power, the latest retreat into hospital has revealed an uncomfortable political truth for Mr Yeltsin: the country is learning to live without him.
Six months ago, Mr Yeltsin's message to the electorate was that it was either him or civil war. Today it is neither him nor civil war. He has been absent from office for all but two weeks since he was elected over six months ago, but no one seems to notice.
The government functions or malfunctions as well or as badly as it ever did.
This stability is dangerous for a man who has represented himself as its sole guarantor but has not been around to do anything about it. In his absence new faces from the provinces have appeared. There have been elections in more than 40 regions of the federation; and 56 per cent of the governors directly appointed by Mr Yeltsin failed to be returned.
Unlike Duma deputies, these governors are men with substantial executive power. They control budgets and decide how much money their region pays into the federation's coffers. They can vote for or against the administration in the Council of the Federation, the upper house of parliament.
This body plays a key role when it comes to making important decisions, like voting for changes in the constitution, which alone could limit the wide sweeping powers the President enjoys.
With an absent President, both the government and the two houses of parliament are more inclined to co operate with each other.
Mr Gennady Zyuganov, the communist leader who heads a soft left alliance with nationalists, realises that more influence is to be obtained by being "constructive" than in confrontation. It is only in Gen Alexander Lebed's interests to press for the resignation, of Mr Yeltsin, because if an election was held the former paratrooper would be favourite to win.
For President Yeltsin a quick return to full health is becoming a political imperative. Otherwise, power could slip away from him, by default.