Have you read Okudzhava's "Journey of Amateurs"? In it, the author tells readers the sad and astonishing love story of the main character, Prince Myatleva, and the young beauty Lavinia, who was married off to an old man, overcoming many obstacles and trials. It turns out that this story has a real background, no less amazing than the novel itself, and which could well serve as the basis for a Brazilian or Mexican seminar.

Let us give the floor to contemporaries, and so our main hero is the prince, a handsome rake and merrymaker Sergey Trubetskoy.

The first offense is described in the disciplinary log: "…on the 11th of this month, having learned that Countess Bobrinskaya with guests were supposed to go boating on the Bolshaya Neva and the Black River, they decided as a joke to go meet them with lit torches and an empty coffin..." He was demoted, exiled to Grodno, from where he was returned to the cavalry guards on December 12 of the same year. And then more: "…A merry company of young people would sneak at night into the flower garden of a pretty summer house occupied by a well-known Italian singer of the time, and, carefully removing the shutters, admire the night attire of the beauty, or set ambushes in women's bathhouses..."

"In our regiment, new adventures. God knows how it will all end this time. Recently, Sergey Trubetskoy with two of my comrades, after a more than abundant dinner at a country restaurant, on the way back began smashing all the facades of roadside houses; imagine the noise that happened the next day. The owners came with complaints to Count Chernyshev, who ordered these gentlemen to be placed in the guardhouse and sent a report to His Majesty in Kaluga. That’s one thing. And here’s another: recently, during a performance at the Alexandrinsky Theater, from the box where officers of our regiment sat, a condom stuffed with papers was thrown at an actress who had the misfortune not to please. Imagine the commotion this caused during the play."

In 1838, a new misfortune befell Sergey Trubetskoy. Emperor Nicholas I, as rumors said, forcibly married him to his favorite maid of honor, Ekaterina Petrovna Musina-Pushkina, who was noticeably pregnant, although there is also a version that Sergey himself was responsible for that pregnancy, which possibly explains the emperor’s subsequent reaction. After all, it turns out that twice women preferred Sergey over Nicholas I himself.

Ekaterina was known in society for her beauty and frivolity; Sofya Nikolaevna Karamzina called her vulgar and stupid. The story of their marriage caused a lot of noise. A. Ya. Bulgakov wrote: "All Petersburg is now only occupied with the maid of honor Pushkina who is with child. The sovereign is always great in all cases. Having learned who made the belly, namely Prince Trubetskoy, a young rake,... he ordered them to be married and announced that she had been secretly married for a year... What a disgrace!"

In the summer of 1838, immediately after the birth of their daughter Sofia, the spouses separated. Ekaterina Petrovna left for abroad with the daughter. In 1852, Sofia Trubetskaya was enrolled in the Catherine Institute for Noble Maidens, and in 1857 she married Duke Charles de Morny, the illegitimate brother of Napoleon III and French ambassador to Russia in 1856-1857. Sergey Trubetskoy’s further fate was quite dramatic; he suffered the fate of every husband of the emperor’s favorites who dared to rebel.

At the end of 1839, Trubetskoy was transferred to the Caucasus. Together with Lermontov, Trubetskoy participated in the battle on the Valerik River on July 11, 1840, where he was wounded by a bullet in the chest. But their names were struck from the award lists by the tsar. In February 1841, Trubetskoy came to Petersburg to say goodbye to his dying father and to treat his wound, without waiting for leave permission. Nicholas I personally placed him under house arrest. During the entire time Lermontov and his friends from the "circle of sixteen" were in Petersburg, Trubetskoy was hopelessly confined at home, "not daring to leave under any pretext," and in April, by "highest order," still ill, he was sent back to the Caucasus. There he settled with Lermontov and a month later was his second at the duel with Martynov. By taking on the duties of second, Trubetskoy knowingly risked, as it could end very badly for him. Later, during the investigation, his involvement was concealed by Glebov and Vasilchikov.

On March 18, 1843, with the rank of staff captain, Sergey Trubetskoy was discharged from service due to illness, "to be assigned to civil affairs."

The story continues as told by Smolny Institute graduate A. Sokolova:

"During my time at the Smolny Monastery, among my classmates was a certain Lopatina, whose distant relative, the remarkable beauty Lavinia Zhadimirovskaya, née Bravur, occasionally came to visit during family visits. We all admired her, and all of Petersburg admired her."

Zhadimirovskaya was a perfect brunette, with the burning eyes of a Creole and a regular face, as if carved by a sculptor’s chisel from pale yellow marble.

When she turned 18, a rich man named Zhadimirovsky, a person with an excellent reputation, madly in love with the young beauty, proposed to her. He demanded no dowry, which was also taken into account by the Bravurs. Upon returning to Petersburg, the Zhadimirovskys opened a rich and very lively salon, which became the center of the most select society.

Portrait of Lavinia

At that time, the nobility annually held a grand ball in honor of the royal family. At one such ball, the beauty Lavinia attracted the attention of Emperor Nicholas Pavlovich, and about this royal "favor," as usual, the heroine of the tsar’s whim was informed. Lavinia was offended and responded with an irrevocable and, for that time, even sharp refusal.

The emperor frowned... and remained silent.

He was not particularly accustomed to refusals but tolerated them when he found a sufficient "justification."

Two or three years passed, and Petersburg was agitated by the scandalous news of the escape of one of the heroines of the winter high society season, the beauty Lavinia Zhadimirovskaya, who abandoned her husband to run away with Prince Trubetskoy, a man already not young and not at all handsome, living after his wife’s death with a small daughter whom, according to rumors, he was preparing to send to an institute.

The escape was arranged very cautiously and skillfully; no one suspected anything until the last minute, and when the fugitives were, according to calculations, already far away, the husband learned from a letter left by his wife where and with whom she had fled.

This affair caused a lot of noise and was reported to the sovereign.

Only then did Emperor Nicholas consciously recall his previous failure, and, having reconciled at that time with his wife’s refusal to be unfaithful, he could not and would not reconcile with the fact that he was preferred to another man, moreover one not younger than himself in years and inferior to him in every way.

He ordered immediately to use all means to find and catch the fugitives and gave a strict order to report everything discovered on this matter to him immediately.

At that time, there were neither telegraphs nor railways. This complicated the escape but, of course, complicated the pursuit even more...

Both were immediately arrested by order from Petersburg and escorted back to Petersburg under guard."

Several gendarme and police officers left Petersburg to find the fugitives. The hunt was like for major state criminals; police and gendarmes searched for them, even the Caucasian viceroy Count Vorontsov took part in this most important state affair. Their trail was picked up by the district policeman Greiner, who rushed to Moscow, then to Tula, but there he ran out of money and was forced to return to Petersburg. Nicholas was informed of this as well, and instead of gratitude, he ordered Greiner to be arrested until the case was closed. One of the gendarme lieutenants rode 4,058 versts, that is, the distance from Petersburg to Novosibirsk! A total of 2,272 rubles 72 kopecks were spent on the operation.

On June 3, 1851, in the port of the tiny town of Redut-Kale on the shore of the Black Sea, a sailing ship was waiting only for passengers. However, the man and his lovely companion never appeared; they were arrested by gendarme lieutenant Chulkov just two hours before the ship’s departure and taken to Tiflis. Nicholas I ordered that after the arrest Sergey and Lavinia should not see each other and travel to Petersburg in different carriages: "He directly here to the fortress, and she to Tsarskoye Selo, where she should be handed over to her husband."

V.N. Balyazin writes:

At the beginning of July, L.V. Dubelt, after interrogating Lavinia Alexandrovna Zhadimirovskaya, established that she fled because of "bad treatment by her husband, which went so far that he locked her up and ordered the servants not to let her out of the house. She is 18 years old, and her testimony seems sincere, as she is a complete child." At the interrogation, she answered: "I completely cooled off towards my husband and, having met Prince Trubetskoy in society, fell in love with him. I proposed to him to take me away because my aversion to my husband was so great that if not for Trubetskoy, I would have proposed to someone else to save me."

Trubetskoy answered: "I decided on this act, moved by the miserable and unhappy condition of this woman. Knowing her still a girl, I witnessed all the torments she endured in her short life. She hated her husband even before the wedding and did not want to marry him at all... I loved her madly; her situation drove me to despair. I was like in a fever and madness, my head was spinning. I never intended to do anything illegal or commit any offense against the government. We only wanted to hide and live somewhere quietly, modestly, and happily." Trubetskoy completely denied the dangerous accusation of intending to flee abroad: "I swear that every Jewish shtetl with her would be a thousand times more beautiful to me than London or Paris."

The tsar personally formulated the charges: "1) for stealing another’s wife; 2) stealing another’s passport; 3) attempting to flee abroad." Prince Trubetskoy entered the Peter and Paul Fortress, but left it as private Trubetskoy. The prince was, by the decision of the Military Court after one and a half months, stripped of his ranks, princely title, nobility, the Order of Anna IV degree with the inscription "For Bravery," demoted to private, and kept in the fortress for another six months. Then he was sent to Petrozavodsk, to a garrison battalion, under the strictest supervision, "under the responsibility of the battalion commander."

For zealous service in May 1853, he was promoted to non-commissioned officer and transferred to the 4th Orenburg line battalion stationed in Novo-Petrovsk, where at that time private Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko was serving. Only after the death of Nicholas I was Trubetskoy discharged due to illness with the rank of second lieutenant, with secret surveillance established over him, and a year and a half later, in 1857, his nobility and princely title were restored, but he remained forbidden to leave the country for the rest of his life.

The staff officer of the gendarme corps for Vladimir province, Colonel Bogdanov, who supervised Trubetskoy’s behavior, wrote in a report: "In March 1858, the prince brought with him from Moscow to the estate a housekeeper who shows herself to no one. The lady living with the prince is still quite young, good-looking, devoted to him so much that she follows him everywhere and does not let him go anywhere without her." Happiness was short-lived; Prince Trubetskoy died on April 19, 1859. A month later, Lavinia left for abroad and, it seems, became a nun in one of the Catholic monasteries.

Sources:

https://xfile.ru/x-files/love/kara_za_gnusnuyu_merzost/

https://lera-komor.livejournal.com/136894.html