Still another story of diamond-point writing, probably even less well attested than the anecdote of Francis I, is that referring to Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh.[293] On the occasion of an interview with the wily queen, Sir Walter, rather distrustful of the royal encouragement accorded him, is said to have gone to a window in the royal audience chamber and written on the window-pane with his diamond ring:
Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall.
For answer the queen scratched beneath this the following admonition, at once an encouragement and a warning:
If thy heart fail thee, do not climb at all.
An eighteenth century instance of diamond-point writing on a pane of glass was reported in an old newspaper.[294] A celebrated English beauty of the eighteenth century, while sojourning at the famous English watering-place, Bath, wrote on a window-pane the following impromptu lines:
In vain, in vain is all you’ve said,
For I’m resolved to die a Maid.
In answer to this a gentleman of her acquaintance cut this rejoinder, the idea being better than the rhyme:
The Lady who this resolution took,
Wrote it on Glass to show it might be broke.