"You said you would teach me to read these papers, to make out these difficult English words. Please do so, signore. I will be a very thankful scholar!" Goethe smiled as he took the paper and unfolded it. He had laid his left arm on the back of the chair, in which Leonora sat; with his right hand he held the paper before her lovely countenance. He began to read and translate, word for word, the passage at which her rosy finger pointed. She listened with breathless attention, utterly unconscious that their heads were side by side, that her cheeks almost touched his, and that her fair, fragrant hair was intermingled with his brown locks. Her whole soul was filled with the determination to impress each word that Goethe uttered indelibly on her mind. Her glances flew like busy bees from the paper to his lips, unconscious that they bore a sting which was infusing sweet poison into the heart of her zealous teacher. To be the teacher of a beautiful young girl is a dangerous office for a man who is young, and impetuous, and whose heart is not preoccupied. To read out of one book, cheek by jowl, so near to each other that the breath of his lips is mingled with hers, and that he can hear her heart's quick throbs--when has a woman done this with impunity, unless it was her lover or her husband with whom she was reading! Francesca da Rimini would not have been murdered by her jealous husband, if she had not read Launcelot with her handsome brother-in-law Paolo Malatesta. "One day we were reading for our delight, Of Launcelot, how love did him enthrall; Alone we were and without any fear, Full many a time our eyes together drew, That reading, and drove the color from our faces; But one point only was it that o'ercame us, When as we read of the much longed-for smile, Being by such a noble lover kissed, This one, who ne'er from me shall be divided, Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it, That day no further did we read therein."[42] They too were reading for their delight, and were alone without any fear. Amarilla sang and danced about on the terrace, and paid no attention to the two who were sitting so close together and studying the English newspaper so earnestly. The passage at which Leonora pointed, chanced to be the simple, touching history of a young man and a girl who loved each other devotedly, but could not be united because the man was already married. The girl, unable to conquer her love, and yet tormented with remorse and anguish, had buried her love and her sorrows in the dark waters of the Thames. Her lover poisoned himself when he learned the sad intelligence, leaving a letter, in which he begged that they might be permitted to rest in one grave.