WASHINGTON - Colleagues on both sides of the aisle have some advice for Sen. James M. Jeffords: Now is probably not the best time to get money for a new bridge in Vermont.

Officially, the word from the Republican leadership is that there will be no public retribution against Jeffords, the Vermont senator whose defection from the party last year cost Republicans the control of the Senate.

Unofficially, Republicans are amusing themselves with other scenarios as they return to power.

Would Vermont's Mount Snow be a good spot for the national depository of nuclear waste? Could that controversial bombing range in Puerto Rico be moved to Lake Champlain? Will Jeffords still have an office when he returns to Washington?

"I was a little worried that I'd find my desk out on the street the day after the election," said Erik Smulson, the spokesman for Jeffords.

The senator himself was not joking.

"I know there were some people pretty angry with me last year, but that has dissipated with time," Jeffords said yesterday in a telephone interview from his office in Vermont.

He said he was not expecting retribution: "The Senate's a pretty collegial group. You learn it's best to get along."

Republicans, though, were not necessarily buying the no-retribution line.

"That sounds like the Taliban's analysis on Sept. 13th," said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and a prominent conservative strategist.

"I don't think Republicans will blockade the state of Vermont, but if Jeffords asks for anything and there's any way to say no, then no will be said, because they won't want to give him anything to put in a press release.

"If I were a liberal environmentalist with an issue to push, I would not want Jeffords anywhere near it. You'd be better off giving it to Teddy Kennedy. Kennedy's a liberal, not a traitor."

John B. Breaux, a Louisiana Democrat, said that any retaliation against Jeffords would have to be discreet to avoid alienating moderate senators essential to the slim Republican majority.

"I think Trent Lott is too smart to lead a public charge against Jeffords," Breaux said, "but the leadership can quietly tell him, 'We didn't like what you did, so that project you wanted ended up on the cutting room floor instead of in the bill.'

"That's normal politics, and his case left an especially bad taste with many Republicans. I respect what Jeffords did, but there are a lot of Republicans who lost their chairmanships because of him."

James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who is an old friend of Jeffords, said that anger at Jeffords had been eased by the victory Tuesday.

"Nothing diffuses resentment like becoming the majority," he said yesterday. But Inhofe, who is expected to replace Jeffords as chairman of the environment and public works committee, agreed that Jeffords would have a tougher time getting new public works in Vermont.

"That's accurate," he said.

Jeffords defended his defection as a decision to be loyal to his principles, and many of his constituents applauded him at the time for courage. Now he is in roughly the same situation as the Woody Allen character in Bananas who bravely pushes a gang of thugs out of a subway car as the doors are closing, only to have his moment of heroism abruptly end as the doors open to let the thugs back in.

Other senators, such as Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, have switched parties with relatively little retribution, but their defections did not tip the balance of power in the Senate, said Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University and the author of a 1999 book, Friend and Foe in the U.S. Senate.

"There's much more seething resentment at Jeffords than at other senators who defected," said Baker, who has worked for a half-dozen senators over the past two decades. "It's not as if the other senators won't say good morning in the elevator, but they won't go out of their way to help him.

"That passive-aggressive approach can be a huge obstacle because a senator's most powerful weapon is causing things not to happen. Jeffords' legislation is not going to the head of the queue, and even having his name as a cosponsor might condemn it in the eyes of some Republicans."

Vermont's problems in the Senate go beyond Jeffords. Republicans also have a bitter grudge against the state's other senator, Democrat Patrick J. Leahy, for using his chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee to block the confirmation of Republican-backed judges. Jeffords said he and Leahy have spoken about their new supporting roles in committees chaired by Republicans.

"Pat and I, obviously, have commiserated," Jeffords said. "But we don't feel that we're being cast out into oblivion. The other senators know that the situation could switch again the next election. The most effective senators are ones that don't get angry. They grin and bear it and get the job done."

In May, Jeffords commemorated his one-year anniversary as an independent by quoting Robert Frost's poem about taking the road less traveled.

"Frost," Jeffords said, "does not specify precisely what difference his choice made, only that he would not choose to turn back. I feel the same way."

Yesterday he was asked how the road looked after the election.

"A little lonelier," he said. "But I have no regrets."