Like a couple locked in a loveless marriage, for five days and nights Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin kept up appearances.
The French President, Prime Minister and their advisers stayed in the same Meridien hotel on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice.
The two men arrived at ever longer sessions of the European Council in the same car, and took infinite pains to show "after you my dear Alphonse" politeness. Nice was a five-day truce in the five year-old war between them.
No one was fooled. All Europe knows the two detest each other, and that their battle will resume now that Nice is over. During one of three joint press conferences, Mr Jospin seemed to allude to the financial scandal that threatens Mr Chirac. After praising the achievements of the French presidency, Mr Jospin said that "when this work is finished, things - and perhaps men - will be looked at closely". Asked yesterday whether he was now ready to speak to the French people about domestic issues - which the audience understood to mean the funding of Mr Chirac's RPR party - the President was almost indignant. "You know that I am in Nice not to comment on news stories but to preside in the name of France, and with the Prime Minister, over a summit that involves the future of Europe."
Each played a pre-assigned role. Mr Chirac was the master of ceremonies, the senior mediator. Despite his occasionally sharp tongue, diplomats gave the French President high points for keeping the debate moving.
It fell to Mr Jospin to defend French interests, and to address technical problems.
Mr Chirac responded to a question regarding parity between French and German votes in the European Council with a lyric flight about history and peace in Europe. The President then tapped Mr Jospin's forearm with his pen and asked him to explain the more banal aspects of vote weighting.
Journalists who asked French officials how the rivals were getting along were chided. "France speaks with one voice in Europe," was the cliche answer. French leaders knew how to set aside their differences for the common good, we were told.
And the press officers - fearful of so much prying into the tensions of "cohabitation" - made themselves scarce.
The most consistent complaint against the French presidency has been that "cohabitation" made it inefficient. With one or two pre-Nice exceptions, the two men behaved well in meetings. But officials close to the President of the European Commission, Mr Romano Prodi, were quoted as saying that "before the presidency speaks, it must reach agreement with itself".
The Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter said: "Messages between the presidency and member countries often get lost in the sorting station between [the prime minister's office at] Matignon and [the President's office at] the Elysee.
Mr Chirac's daughter Claude, his communications adviser, was as attentive as ever to her father's image, and the President appeared before television cameras wearing too much pancake make-up at the 5 a.m. close of the summit. Public relations were never Mr Jospin's strong suit, but he performed well at Nice.
While Mr Chirac and Mr Prodi talked about the need for Europeans to speak at least three languages, Mr Jospin upstaged them both by addressing the audience in Italian.