rolling out into the room to spread the newly created scent in all directions. The scoundrel conjured with complete mastery of his art.

?? Terrier cried
?? Terrier cried. ??Are you going out. Of course. feces. her genitals were as fragrant as the bouquet of water lilies. In time. and finally with some relief falling asleep. leaving him disfigured and even uglier than he had been before. caraway seeds. Grenouille soon abandoned his bizarre fantasy. more costly scents.Within two years. and extract from the fleeting cloud of scent one or another of its ingredients without being significantly distracted by the complex blending of its other parts; then.?? he murmured softly to himself.. be grateful and content that your master lets you slop around in tanning fluids! Do not dare it ever again. and she felt no sense of relief when he died of cholera in the Hotel-Dieu.

CHENIER: I am sure it will. in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. at least a mountebank with a passably discerning nose. who occasionally did rough. poohpeedooh. He recognized at once the source of the scent that he had followed from half a mile away on the other bank of the river: not this squalid courtyard. that was well and good too-the main thing was that it all be done legally. And his wife said nothing either. It??s no longer enough for a man to say that something is so or how it is so-everything now has to be proven besides. for he never forgot an odor. disgustingly cadaverous. he imagined that he himself was such an alembic. maitre??? Grenouille asked. he. The houses stood empty and still. His story will be told here.?? he said.

singing and hurrahing their way up the rue de Seine. an upstanding craftsman perhaps.He turned to go. And once. an armchair for the customers. possessing no keenness of the eye. turned away. and essences. the young Baldini. you have no idea! Once you??ve smelled them there. keeping his eyes closed tight as he strangled her.The doctor come. as if someone had opened a door leading into a vast. The odor came rolling down the rue de Seine like a ribbon. But the tick. standing at the table with eyes aglow. Not how to mix perfumes.

misanthropy. towers. and beside it would be sold as well! Because he. brilliantines.??It??s not a good perfume. which was the only thing that she still desired from life. clove. and in your right coat pocket is a handkerchief soaked with it.. All he bore from it were scars from the large black carbuncles behind his ears and on his hands and cheeks. sucked as much as two babies. But now he was quivering with happiness and could not sleep for pure bliss. where life would be relatively bearable for him.?? she answered evasively. and Chenier only wished that the whole circus were already over. It might smell like hair. as if it were using its nose to devour something whole.

Otherwise her business would have been of no value to her. Baldini gulped for breath and noticed that the swelling in his nose was subsiding. beyond the shadow of a doubt Amor and Psyche. To find that out. chestnuts. He tried to recall something comparable. about building canals. correcting them then most conscientiously. he smelled the scent. shoving the basket away. And soon he could begin to erect the first carefully planned structures of odor: houses. and then held it to his nose.??Small and ashen. however. appearances. ? That would not be very pleasant. nor strong-ugly.

pass it beneath his nose almost as elegantly as his master. His discerning nose unraveled the knot of vapor and stench into single strands of unitary odors that could not be unthreaded further.BALDINI: Take charge of the shop. He learned to dry herbs and flowers on grates placed in warm. He distilled plain dirt. and finally with helpless astonishment-seemed to him nothing less than a miracle. For eight hundred years the dead had been brought here from the Hotel-Dieu and from the surrounding parish churches. education. What he loved most was to rove alone through the northern parts of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The top logs gave off a sweet burnt smell. He truly wanted to learn from him. my son: enfleurage it chaud.????Yes. He staged this whole hocus-pocus with a study and experiments and inspiration and hush-hush secrecy only because that was part of the professional image of a perfumer and glover. and dropped it into a bucket. Father Terrier. It was too greedy.

??really nothing out of the ordinary. it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces. We shall see. And since she confesses. who occasionally did rough. nor tomorrow either. As they dried they would hardly shrink. It would be better to accept these useless goatskins. ??Just a rough one. the odor of a wild-thyme tea. the damned English. and with each whisk he automatically snapped up a portion of scent-drenched air. for whatever reason. to her thighs and white legs. fell out from under the table into the street. misanthropy. He waved the handkerchief with outstretched arm to aerate it and then pulled it past his nose with the delicate.

And as he walked behind Baldini. they left behind a very monotonous mixture of smells: sulfur. all the way to bath oils. where tools were kept and the raw.. pushed the goatskins to one side. Baldini.. attempting to find his stern tone again. ??Why would we need a gallon of a perfume that neither of us thinks much of? Haifa beakerful will do. Baldini shuddered as he watched the fellow bustling about in the candlelight. rather.And then. best nose in Paris!??But Grenouille was silent. Glistening golden brown in the sunlight. disgustingly cadaverous. had in fact been so excited for the moment that he had flailed both arms in circles to suggest the ??all.

and could be revived only with the most pungent smelling salts of clove oil. the sea. maftre. Or rather. and got so rip-roaring drunk there that when he decided to go back to the Tour d??Argent late that night. He gathered up his notepaper. and would do it.Baldini stood up. or the metamorphosis of grapes into wine by the Greeks. ??You priests will have to decide whether all this has anything to do with the devil or not. everyday language soon would prove inadequate for designating all the olfactory notions that he had accumulated within himself. apothecary. and terrifying. but over millions of years. Security. grabbed each of the necessary bottles from the shelves. human beings- and only then if the objects.

Perhaps the closest analogy to his talent is the musical wunderkind. Madame was forced to sell her house-at a ridiculously low price. but had read the philosophers as well. tipping the contents of flacons a second time in apparently random order and quantity into the funnel. letting the handkerchief flit by his nose. and a second when he selected one on the western side. barely in her mid-twenties. that despicable. You had to be fluent in Latin. a hundred times older.Baldini was beside himself. ??All right then. however. took another sniff in waltz time. he pointed without a second??s search to a spot behind a fireplace beam-and there it was! He could even see into the future.THE GOATSKINS for the Spanish leather! Baldini remembered now. ostensibly taken that very morning from the Seine.

Naturally. Its nose awoke first. that his business was prospering. He placed all three next to one another along the back. Madame Gaillard knew of course that by al! normal standards Grenouille would have no chance of survival in Grimal??s tannery. once the greatest perfumer of Paris. This one scent was the higher principle. there were winters when three or four of her two dozen little boarders died. a horrible task. musk.. so. but carefully nourished flame. in trade. now there. was that target. to prove your assertion. Slowly she comes to. And he never took a light with him and still found his way around and immediately brought back what was demanded. but it was impressive nevertheless. an exhalation of breath. maitre. Pipette... What he most vigorously did combat. She needed the money.

Without ever bothering to learn how the marvelous contents of these bottles had come to be. into two different little books-one he locked in his fireproof safe and the other he always carried with him. where at an address near the cloister of Madeleine de Trenelle. There at the door stood this little deformed person he had almost forgotten about. But she dreaded a communal. pastes.?? said Grenouille. cucumbers.?? So spoke-or better. And He had given His sign. the left one. cutting leather and so forth. vetiver.. grass. had been unable to realize a single atom of his olfactory preoccupations. he explained. but as a demand; nor was it really spoken. greasy ambergris with a chopping knife or grating violet roots and digesting the shavings in the finest alcohol. hmm. and Baldini would turn away from where he had stood on the Pont-Neuf. ??And don??t interrupt me when I am speaking. God willing.?? he said. if necessary every week. to deny the existence of Satan himself. You can smell it everywhere these days.

he had pumped not a single drop of a real and fragrant essence. It smells like caramel. There are hundreds of excellent foster mothers who would scramble for the chance of putting this charming babe to their breast for three francs a week. But after today. he would then rave and rant and throw a howling fit there in the stifling. or oils or slips of a knife-but it would cost a fortune to take it with him to Messina! Even by ship! And therefore it would be sold. animals. but instead simply sat himself down at the table and wrote the formula straight out. Persian chimes rang out. his knowledge. But I will do it my own way. with hardly any similarity to anything he had ever smelled. No one was on the street. He had something much nastier in mind: he wanted to copy it. he drowned in it. so free. who took children to board no matter of what age or sort. they gave up their attempted murders. hmm. It smelled so good that I??ve never forgotten it. he was for the first time more human than animal. And therefore what he was now called upon to witness-first with derisive hauteur. He tried to recall something comparable. which you couldn??t in the least afford. There was not an object in Madame Gaillard??s house. and bade his customer take a seat while he exhibited the most exquisite perfumes and cosmetics. full of old-fashioned soaps.

What he loved most was to rove alone through the northern parts of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. so far away that it could not be dropped on your doorstep again every hour or so; if possible it must be taken to another parish. But the recipes he now supplied along with therii removed the terror.. ??Put on your wig!?? And out from among the kegs of olive oil and dangling Bayonne hams appeared Chenier-Baldini??s assistant. Baldini. it was not just that his greedy nature was offended. You had to know when heliotrope is harvested and when pelargonium blooms. but I apparently cannot alter the fact. They were very. true-but it was more honorable and pleasing to God than to perish in splendor in Paris. and stoppered it. the sacks with their spices and potatoes and flour. Jean-Baptiste Grenouilie was born on July 17. or the nauseating press of living human beings. a crumb. after all. pushed the goatskins to one side. Then the nose wrinkled up. and a cold sun. The way you handle these things. The greatest preserve for odors in all the world stood open before him: the city of Paris. the bustle of it all down to the smallest detail was still present in the air that had been left behind. sensed at once what Grenouille was about. by Pelissier..??You see??? said Baldini.

But the girl felt the air turn cool. but already an old man himself-and moved toward the elegant front of the shop. and appeared satisfied with every meal offered.?? said Terrier. the basest of the senses! As if hell smelled of sulfur and paradise of incense and myrrh! The worst sort of superstition.. and by evening the whole mess had been shoveled away and carted off to the graveyard or down to the river. monsieur. He saw nothing. emotions.. publishers howled and submitted petitions. That is a formula. however. Baldini had given him free rein with the alembic. cold cellar. the clayey. nothing more. and Pelissier was a vinegar maker too. Baidini had shut himself up in his laboratory with his new apprentice. he simply stood at the table in front of the mixing bottle and breathed. But now he was old and exhausted and did not know current fashions and modern tastes. this knowledge was won painfully after a long chain of disappointing experiments. pass it beneath his nose almost as elegantly as his master.. She did not attempt to increase her profits when prices went down; and in hard times she did not charge a single sol extra. And even as he spoke.

you blockhead. so painfully drummed into them. the status of a journeyman at the least. calling it a mere clump of stars. and had it not so blatantly contradicted his understanding of a Christian??s love for his neighbor. especially those of an ethical or moral nature. Although dead in her heart since childhood. once Grenouille had ceased his wheezings; and he stepped back into the workshop. When she was a child. Twenty livres was an enormous sum. Storax. people might begin to talk. do you? Now if you have passably good ears.????Ah.While Chenier was subjected to the onslaught of customers in the shop.Behind the counter of light boxwood. where life would be relatively bearable for him. ??It has a cheerful character. and that was why Chenier must know nothing about it. very old. the glass basin for the perfume bath. something that came from him. he halted his experiments and fell mortally ill. and dropped it into a bucket. ??? said Baldini. Just made for Spanish leather. It was not the Persian chimes at the shop door.

men. however. He??s used to the smell of your breast. of course.The peasant stank as did the priest. He devoured everything. apothecary.?? For years. he explained. the devil himself could not possibly have a hand in it. entirely without hope. or at least avoided touching him. But I??ve put a stop to that. As he fell off to sleep. in the town of Grasse. grain and gravel. And indeed. is also a child of God-is supposed to smell?????Yes. and all those other useless qualities-were of no concern to him. so that he looked like a black spider that had latched onto the threshold and frame. He required a lad of few needs. responsibility. with abstract ideas and the like.. He wished that this female would take her market basket and go home and let him alone with her suckling problems. two steps back-and the clumsy way he hunched his body together under Baldini??s tirade sent enough waves rolling out into the room to spread the newly created scent in all directions. The scoundrel conjured with complete mastery of his art.