He arrived at Belfast City Hall soon after noon in a green Cavalier, sporting a tiny silver pike on the usual green lapel ribbon, along with an odd-looking tie.
This featured a recurring motif of a red figure prostrate on a yellow bed with something floating above it, like something the (absurdly happy-looking) members of the Natural Law Party might enjoy. Then again, maybe it meant something entirely different.
Anyway, it was an amusing little diversion while it lasted and, in the City Hall at least, the only one for quite some time. For the Northern authorities have accomplished something that election junkies in the South presumed to be impossible. They have rendered PR boring.
The fevered atmosphere of the counting hall, the boxes being opened, the votes being revealed before your eyes, the tallymen calculating furiously while delivering judgments from the side of the mouth, the candidates growing steadily more morose or euphoric. Ulster says No to all that.
And they do it simply by banning journalists from the counting halls.
So the broadcasting media create their own little centres of excitement by staking a claim to every square inch of the Rotunda, bullying all-comers off their patch while keeping a militant eye on the opposition.
For a media-friendly fellow like Gerry Adams, what this means in practice is a perambulation round an inner circle of hell, time after time to make the next news at the top of the hour, in a hall dominated by a mural of Belfast getting its charter.
And still no interviewer managed to shatter that cool aura of sweet reason.
Nor was he ruffled by the limb-threatening media scrums in the corridor outside the massive (and tightly secure) wooden door concealing the West Belfast count.
Like a hostile judgment from above, it was here that the world's journalists (at least 40 from Spain alone) were destined to struggle for every breath while awaiting the emergence of the newly-elected Assembly member for West Belfast.
Unlike the earlier sterling efforts at the Gaeilge ("Ta me sasta go leor leis our voting"), here he quelled the melee by using just the one reproachful word in the Republic's first language: "Could we have a wee bit of ciunas?" Upon which command, the world fell respectfully silent.
"We're in line for a definite three seats in West Belfast, and I'd say if we managed our vote as well as we should have, we'll take four," he said before adding a tad ruefully: "Actually, I got too many votes, if I can say so. If I had got less, we might have been in for five seats."
In any event, in the swift and regal progress back to the Rotunda, he suddenly stopped by local SF councillor and vote manager Fran McCann to bestow a great hug on him.
"I told you were the best manager in the country," said the leader quietly, leaving Mr McCann blushing like a bride. (And yes, there were real brides in City Hall yesterday, bound heedlessly for the registry through one door while many old lags of Ulster headed for another.)
But Mr McCann had other fish to fry, such as the reported 880 spoiled votes in West Belfast alone, 1 per cent of the poll, he reckoned, and, even more tragically, 90 per cent of which were estimated to be Sinn Fein's. And mostly spoiled in innocence, by all accounts.
"They all seemed to be five Xs or five ones," he said with a sigh.
Meanwhile, the media continued their advance on Mr Adams, in sallies negotiated by Richard McAuley, the man who is to Gerry Adams what Peter Mandelson is to Tony Blair. It was hard not to feel a twinge of sympathy for him as snippets of interviews floated across.
"Oh, I thought there were graves with 20 people in each," said a disappointed American journalist upon being assured that the missing bodies being discussed amounted to around a dozen in all. "This isn't Bosnia," said Mr McAuley patiently, before explaining that, of course, this didn't make it any less distressing for the bereaved relatives.
Later, in the impressive council chamber and under the eye of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII, the two sipped bottled water and stood grinning broadly at Dr Paisley expostulating on television.
As Paisley pronounced "the obituary of Trimbleism" and Robert McCartney gloated over Trimble and Taylor "in disarray", the Sinn Fein leader sat down to yet another interview with a foreign crew. But even the legendary Adams stamina (a spin-off from his hill-walking) had begun to fray around the edges.
Was he dejected? For the first time, the great calm was ruffled. "I'm not in the least bit dejected," he retorted smartly, "I'm totally exhausted. You shouldn't mix up the fact that Richard McAuley does door-to-door interviews with me as this vote saying anything other than what we said going into this general election campaign . . .
"The big story is that nationalists are resurgent and that both nationalist parties have increased their vote, as we have in previous elections. I think there's that sense of assertiveness and confidence within nationalists and we're a part of that. And that makes me very happy."
But not too tired or too happy to fail to direct a sally at The Irish Times for being involved in an exit poll which meant that "all the talk last night and early this morning was dominated by totally false issues . . . as in the matter of the Sinn Fein vote which the poll said was down when clearly it isn't. Maybe you'll be proved right at the end of the day, but West Belfast is up by 6 per cent, West Tyrone, Mid Ulster and Foyle are up . . . "
We agreed to wait and see.