“No,” I replied, “with grandfather I earn it.” And I really thought I had earned the money by all the trouble I had taken.
I always fancied that the “notary,” whose horrid history I learned only long afterwards, helped me to find grandfather’s money, and consequently I considered the skeleton my friend. So it did not strike me as unusual when, one summer evening, while some neighbours were enjoying the cool air with us in our moonlit garden, my grandfather should have told me to go and fetch the “notary” from the garret, which, by the way, he would not have done himself.
Grandmother nodded approvingly, delighted at the idea that I was about to do something extraordinary, which would the next day electrify the town. She looked at me with her bright eyes and her red-gold hair shining in the moonlight. She was dressed in white, her favourite colour for herself and for me, and wore a large bunch of lilacs I had pinned on her bosom.
“Shall I go?” I asked her in a low tone. “They will be frightened—they do not know what the ‘notary’ is.”
“Yes, go,” she said, laughing.
I went up to the garret to fetch the “notary.”
He was very large, and I was very small. I put his head under my left arm, and with my right hand took hold of the banister. The moon was shining through the window. I can still hear the noise his bones made as they rattled on the stairs behind me.
I entered the garden, and threw the “notary” on grandfather’s knees. There was a general scream. The children shrieked, and hid their heads in their mothers’ laps. The mothers cried: “Oh! what a horrible thing! It is frightful! Monsieur Seron, take it away!”
Grandfather enjoyed the joke, and laughed with all his might. One woman fainted, and, while grandmother was throwing water on her face, he took the “notary” and placed it at the foot of the stairs. He did not dare to take it up himself.
We found this out afterwards, because Arthémise, coming into the room which I shared with grandmother, when we had gone to bed, cried out: