The Eliot/Silda Spitzer schism. Once she was standing by her husband. Understood. Now she isn’t sleeping with him. Also understood. This lawyer lady’s special. Good family, good relationships, charitable, refined. To be her friend is a privilege.

When New York’s temporary governor was a bad boy and had his game on — also his socks — she came over. Three weeks after the story broke we sat alone. Three hours. Lunch, tears, talk off the record. It stayed off the record.

Silda allowed her husband had changed. Gone were simplicities or pleasantries. Spitzer, now governor, a “f – – king” steamroller, felt invincible. Maybe his gracious beautiful wife suited him in the drawing room, not in the bedroom. Had she sensed anything? She said, no.

Hillary and Huma stuck. However, maybe it’s the times. The Gores of Washington separated, the McGreeveys of New Jersey separated, South Carolina’s ex-Gov, with his Appalachian mistress in Argentina, separated. What can’t always be separated out is that male menopausal sex drive.

I burbled old-style wifelike things: You’re raising three kids. You’re comfortable financially. You’re at no age to relish the dating swamp. A husband of nearly 50, wed 21 years, grazed. Hooked up with a hooker. So? Happens. Jackie stayed with JFK. FDR tested so many mattresses he nearly had bedsores. It’s like takeout food. Less work for mother. Stay. At her stage, where’s she going? It worked for a while. It weathered the misery. But time and itches go on. Weiner wanted to flout his thing. Shpritzer wants to flaunt his thing. Qué sera.

This man split to be near his ailing father? B.S. For years I cared for a husband and same-age mother. Both with hospital beds and 24-hour nurses. It isn’t adult diapers and retrieving frail family members from the floor that’s consuming Spitzer. It’s his shorts.

Signs of artistic tendencies

At Venice’s Biennale art scrum, Tilda Swinton in boyish bob, lipstick, no eye makeup: “I’m here because I’m interested in all that’s artistic.”

This why she laid down and snoozed in public at MoMA last March?

“Yes. I developed this one-person piece ‘The Maybe.’ It’s sleeping fully clothed in an elevated open glass box with pillows and water jug while people watch.

“I first did this 17 years ago, but not being well-known it didn’t attract attention. Now it does. I plan to do this many times. I don’t announce when in advance because I don’t always know. It’s whenever there’s a break in my work and there’s time.

“I’d love to do Broadway but, failing that, I’ll definitely do this performance art again in New York.”

Forget her sleeping on the job. Here’s what’s in the Biennale’s American pavilion: “In thermodynamics, ‘triple point’ designates a combination of temperature and pressure. All three substance phases (gas, liquid, solid) exist in perfect equilibrium. Triangulation — distance measurement from three ordinal points — also specifies a unique position in space. Sarah Sze [the artist] references the fragility of equilibrium and constant ambition to create stability and location.”

OK? So shove Rembrandt.

Odds & ends

A Sunday ago 4:44 p.m., on the updated belated finishing of the Boston Marathon, Ch. 1 labelled the report a “reprize” of the original story . . . Ed Burns: “Today’s technology distracts. One blog leads to another to another and suddenly it’s bedtime.” . . . May 25, 1988, long before HBO’s Michael DouglasMatt Damon resurrection of Liberace, his autograph brought only $100.

Goodbye Jean

We lost Jean Stapleton, who played Archie (Carroll O’Connor) Bunker’s ditz wife on TV’s “All in the Family.” She’d grown frail. First a walker, then an aide. But always smiling, cheerful, friendly. I knew her well. I saw her twice a week for years. This is just to send a hug and a goodbye to Jean.

SERENDIPITY’s Stephen Bruce treated Sofia Vergara to a Golden Opulence Sundae with: “This Guinness World Record creation costs $1,000.” Said Sofia: “What?! Did I win a prize?”

Only in New York, kids, only in New York.