“Do you mean to say that Amarilla is writing a love-letter with her flowers?”
“Be still, do not betray her, signore. Look down, that no profane glance may desecrate the letters which God and the sun have created!”
“But I may look at that young man who is stealing out from behind the evergreen-hedge, may I not?”
“Of what young man are you speaking?” asked Leonora, in alarm.
“Of the young Comaccini, who is cautiously peering through those bushes, and for whom the fragrant love-letter, which Amarilla holds aloft so triumphantly, is probably intended.”
“No, do not look that way, signore,” cried Leonora, with an air of confusion, as she hastily took one of the papers from the table and handed it to Goethe.
“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,