By the time President Jacques Chirac arrived in a helicopter to open the Rambouillet peace conference, it seemed the 13 Yugoslavs and 17 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo had become inmates of the world's most exclusive insane asylum, beautifully landscaped and surrounded by high iron bars.
The two delegations sat on opposite sides of the room late on Saturday, perched on little red velvet chairs, not speaking to or looking at one another.
Mr Chirac confirmed that if the six-nation Contact Group, NATO and the EU had insisted on locking up representatives of the warring parties, it was because their illness might be contagious.
"Neither France nor her European, American and Russian partners will allow such a conflict to go on," Mr Chirac said. "Nor will we allow this spiral of violence to threaten the stability of the whole of south-eastern Europe. We want peace to prevail on our continent."
The countries which were now putting the Balkan protagonists in isolation had themselves suffered from the same sickness, and their example ought to be followed.
"France has known the horrors of war," Mr Chirac said. "She knows the face of barbarity. But she learned to heal what were thought to be everlasting wounds. She has overcome supposedly ancestral hatreds. She tells you today that the will for peace can outweigh the temptation of war."
It was in the same castle that Gen de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer laid to rest Franco-German enmity by signing the Elysee Treaty in 1962.
Mr Gerard Larcher, the Mayor of Rambouillet and Vice-President of the French Senate, suggested the castle's new inhabitants would learn "serenity and peasant common sense" from watching deer in the grounds and ducks on the ornamental pond.
Mr Robin Cook, the British Foreign Secretary, who is co-chairing the conference, said that "there could not be a more discreet location nor a more attractive environment."
He and "Hubert" [Vedrine, the French Foreign Minister] were entrusting the participants to the care of the US, Russian and EU mediators, but they would look in from time to time. Wearing white coats?
As the conference opened, three people were killed in an attack in Pristina, a reminder that those subjected to the two-week Rambouillet cure are not necessarily those who most need it.
By Mr Vedrine's admission, the delegations at the peace conference are divided among themselves. And if the 30 inmates of Rambouillet sign at the bottom of the 20-page framework document establishing "substantial autonomy" for Kosovo and calling for the reduction of the Serb police force from 10,000 to 2,500 and the dismantling of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), the Contact Group will then have to ensure the agreement is respected.
The document has been drawn up over the past three months, and Mr Cook said that three-quarters of it is non-negotiable.
Mr Vedrine had spent much of the previous night on the telephone to Belgrade, demanding that the Kosovar delegation be allowed to leave Pristina. The Serbs would not let members of the UCK depart in a French government jet.
They only relented under threat of force, and the conference opened three hours late because of the incident.
Mr Ratko Markovic, leader of the Serb delegation, said that in any case "we will not negotiate with the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army. We consider them to be terrorists and outlaws."
How would Mr Vedrine cope with the Serbs' intransigence? "In all conflicts of this type, both parties start from positions that are absolutely incompatible," the French Foreign Minister said.
To the fury of Yugoslav officials, a shouting crowd of about 100 ethnic Albanians marched through the town of Rambouillet.
"Requiem for Srebrenica", said one placard, recalling the Bosnian town where up to 8,000 Muslims were slaughtered by Serb forces. "Milosevic, you'll end up in The Hague."
The Yugoslav President reportedly refuses to leave Serbia because he is afraid of being arrested, like Gen Augusto Pinochet, and the Serbs are expected to ask for guarantees of his immunity in any peace agreement.
Human Rights Watch circulated a new report on Kosovo at Rambouillet this weekend, specifically asking "that a political settlement does not stand in the way of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his top military planners being held accountable for atrocities committed by government forces in Kosovo".