The party's former caucus gathered for one last time in a hotel north of Montreal on Wednesday, ostensibly to provide a unified backdrop for Duceppe's swan song.
They greeted their leader with a standing ovation and shouts of, "Bravo!" as Duceppe entered to meet with his outgoing and incoming batch of Bloc MPs.
The show of unity belied internal struggles. While Duceppe gave his final news conference, there were whispers of existential anxiety, and whether the Bloc would continue having a purpose.
A clash also emerged over Duceppe's replacement.
First out of the gate was Pierre Paquette -- one of 43 MPs to have lost his job on May 2 -- who declared Wednesday that he will seek the party's leadership.
He argued the party shouldn't wait too long in choosing another leader as it risks losing members in the meantime.
"After six months I am afraid there will be some problems to maintain the bodies in the Bloc Quebecois," Paquette said in English.
His eagerness to start the leadership process drew a sharp rebuke from another outgoing MP, Michel Guimond, who was the party's chief organizer in the Quebec City area.
"I think he's making a mistake. I'm completely against this. I'm angry," Guimond said before the caucus meeting.
"We could at least have the decency to let the body cool down."
Many MPs agreed with that assessment, acknowledging they had much to think about over the summer.
The Bloc's once-dominant position in Quebec politics was reduced to little more than rump in the recent election.
Voters who had consistently supported the sovereigntist party for years abandoned it suddenly for the NDP, a party which never held more than one seat in Quebec.
The party's near-total annihilation on May 2 has opened up long-term survival questions -- such as whether the Bloc will manage or even bother to rebuild, without official party status in the Commons.
"Quebecers have questioned us; they even put the relevance of the Bloc on the table," said Daniel Paille, another ex-MP who is rumoured to have leadership aspiration.
"So we have to take time with the reflection process, we can't rush it, we have to think about it."
Comparing his party to a bus, Paille said the problem wasn't with the driver: "It's something more significant than that."
He suggested that voters offered more of a warning than a rejection of sovereignty.
"Quebec is between 40-45 per cent sovereigntist, and 23 per cent voted for us. So where are the others? That's what we have to find out."
For his part, Duceppe insisted that the Bloc would remain a vital force in Canadian politics. He argued that few parties have ever been as dominant over as long a period as it has.
He also argued that before the Bloc came into existence, a huge proportion of Quebecers could not recognize themselves in the Trudeau Liberals who used to win nearly every seat in the province.
Now, he says, Quebecers might not recognize themselves in the NDP because people in the province staunchly support free trade and New Democrats have always worked to block it.
But for 21 years, between 1990 and last week, the Bloc had a stranglehold on votes here. Even in this disastrous election, Duceppe argued, the Bloc maintained a strong base of support.
"We finished second in the vote ... more than one million Quebecers trusted us," he told reporters. "The Bloc remains important for a good number of people."
But in the wake of the election, both Duceppe and the Bloc appeared shadows of their former selves Wednesday.
Duceppe ran a notoriously tight ship as leader, and the prospect of MPs criticizing each other in public would have been unthinkable just 10 days ago.
The effects of the stunning election debacle were still apparent on the 63-year-old politician.
Duceppe delivered a soft-spoken performance at his news conference, his voice at times barely audible despite the microphone.
Gone were the stinging criticisms, the bursts of indignation and the dismissive one-liners he was known for.
He admitted his children have been calling him twice a day to see how he is coping. He said he has no future career plans for the moment, other than cleaning up the Bloc offices in Ottawa.
"I'm okay as possible," he said. "It is something sad that happened, but there is still life in front of me."
Duccepe said he was heartened to hear from Quebecers who said they didn't believe he did a bad job. He suspects they simply voted for another party that represented change.
He took several jabs at the NDP -- saying it was difficult to counter an agent of change that also happened to be almost invisible.
"It's very hard to fight change. Especially change represented by ghosts -- candidates who didn't bother campaigning, who didn't speak French," Duceppe said.
In a twist of irony, Duceppe was making those remarks just as the people of Berthier-Maskinonge riding were receiving a first visit from their new local MP.
Ruth Ellen Brosseau spent part of the campaign vacationing in Las Vegas, lives 300 kms away from the riding, and does not speak much French. She made her first trip to the riding Wednesday.
