The great French writer Alexander Dumas (1802 – 1870) married the actress Ida Ferrer in 1840. That wedding was not for love but for the dowry that Ida contributed and with which she could settle the multiple debts that the writer had.
They lived in the same house but separately, Ida on the ground floor and Dumas on the first floor. One very cold winter night, returning late to his house, Dumas thought that perhaps there was a fire in the fireplace in Ida's apartment, and he knocked. The wife opened it for him in her nightgown because she had already gone to bed, but the fire in the fireplace was still burning and Dumas sat down. The rush of his wife, for him to leave, made them suspect that something was wrong. He looked around the room and found his friend Roger de Beauvoir on the balcony. who was shivering with cold. Far from making a scene, Dumas told his friend:
-Hey, Roger, you have disturbed the peace of my family. I want to forgive you. Let's be magnanimous as the ancient Romans were, who when they wanted to make peace reconciled in the public square.
And taking her hand, he placed it between her wife's legs, adding:
-This will be our public square.
Source:Intimacies of History – Carlos Fisas