A week after publicly scolding her husband for his roving eye, Silvio Berlusconi's wife returned to the press on Wednesday to defend her actions.
Veronica Lario said in an interview with Corriere della Sera, Italy's biggest daily, that "I acted on a heartfelt impulse, an instinct for self-preservation... I feel wiser now, more at peace with myself".
"I am a 50-year-old woman married to a 70-year-old man. Mutual respect is fundamental, particularly at our age," said the former actress, who still goes by her stage name.
In a letter published by the daily La Repubblica last Wednesday, Lario demanded - and subsequently received - a public apology from her husband for his flirtatious ways which she said belittled and demeaned her.
Lario referred to comments the former premier reportedly made to several young and glamourous showgirls during a gala dinner given after a top TV award ceremony.
"My husband made remarks I find unacceptable: 'If I weren't already married, I'd marry you straight away' and 'I'd go anywhere with you'.
"These statements undermine my dignity and, given the age, political role and family situation of the person who said them, cannot be written off as playful comments," Lario said in her letter, which was all the more embarrassing for Berlusconi since it appeared in the country's leading left-wing daily.
Within hours, the centre-right opposition chief had duly apologised with another letter faxed to Italian media organisations.
"I treasure your dignity in my heart even when a lighthearted joke, a gallant remark or a momentary trifle comes out of my mouth.
"I beg you to forgive me," said the billionaire media tycoon, who admitted that his marriage was undergoing a period of "trouble and turbulence" but told his wife that it was "sure to end in sweetness, like all true love stories".
The public spat between Lario and Berlusconi held the country in thrall, as well as making headlines around the world.
Italians were all the more astonished because Lario is known for her reserve and the low profile she has kept during her 27-year-long marriage to Italy's best-known politician.
But Lario was also criticised by various politicians, commentators and opinion polls for deciding to air her grievances in public.
Lario told Corriere that she was indifferent to the criticism.
"I don't need to consult opinion polls to know what I should and shouldn't do... I'd had enough and realised that my husband's recurrent behaviour did not just affect himself," she said.
"For some time now, my husband's life has been almost exclusively geared towards the public scene. If I had to calculate the space he reserves for public life and the time he gives to his family, I would say we're at 99 to one.
"I therefore decided to shift myself to his ground, where he spends 99% of his life," she said.
Born Miriam Raffaela Bartolini, Lario is Berlusconi's second wife.
Berlusconi left his first wife for Lario, smitten after seeing her perform topless in a Milan play about a philandering husband called The Magnificent Cuckold.
They have three children: two daughters, aged 22 and 20, and a son, aged 18.
The youthful-looking Berlusconi, who has admitted to a face lift and a hair transplant, has always cultivated a playboy image and been linked by the gutter press to a string of young and beautiful women.
The recipients of his reported admiration at the gala dinner were Venezuelan model and showgirl Aida Yespica and Mara Carfagna, an ex-showgirl whom he made an MP with his Forza Italia party.
Lario's open criticism of her husband's behaviour sparked a political debate, with many centre-left and opposition women lawmakers defending her.
Most male politicians took a different view, saying that Lario should have kept her problems private.
The case dominated the Italian media, with TV current affairs shows ditching their scheduled programmes to cover it.
Even the Church weighed in, with Cardinal Ersilio Tonini saying that Lario's letter had "stirred my heart".
