the cord of wood like a wooden puppet. Fireworks can do that.To be sure. to the drop and dram.

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
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. he hauled water up from the river. The greatest preserve for odors in all the world stood open before him: the city of Paris. Paris. musk. That??s in it too. Giuseppe Baldini-owner of the largest perfume establishment in Paris. not even his own scent. scented gloves.The very first evening. Jeanne Bussie.. lowered his fat nose into it. and just as little when she bore her children. I cannot deliver the Spanish hide to the count. did not look at her. It would be better to accept these useless goatskins. if they were no longer very young. out of which there likewise gushed a distillate. lifted the basket. Which is why it is of no interest to the devil. ??How would you mix it???For the first time. The first was the cloak of middle-class respectability. He did not need to see.

that bungler in the rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts. he would have to dig them up again and retrieve these mummified hide carcasses-now tanned leather- from their grave. together with whom he had haunted the Cevennes; about the daughter of a Huguenot in the Esterel. Grenouille had to prepare a large demijohn full of Nuit Napolitaine. He distilled plain dirt. He got rid of him at the cloister of Saint-Merri in the rue Saint-Martin.?? Baldini replied and waved him off with his free hand. swelling up thick and red and then erupting like craters. there??s something to be said for that. porcelain. To create a clandestine imitation of a competitor??s perfume and sell it under one??s own name was terribly improper. with no notion of the ugly suspicions raised against you. from the old days. But more improper still was to get caught at it. Security. the bustle of it all down to the smallest detail was still present in the air that had been left behind. He had the prescience of something extraordinary-this scent was the key for ordering all odors.THERE WERE a baker??s dozen of perfumers in Paris in those days. like skin and hair and maybe a little bit of baby sweat. not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one. You can explain it however you like.. or a face paint. don??t we???And with that he took two candlesticks that stood at the end of the large oak table and lit them.

BALDINI: I could care less what that bungler Pelissier slops into his perfumes. singing and hurrahing their way up the rue de Seine. never as a concentrate. huddles there and lives and waits. The scents he could create at Baldini??s were playthings compared with those he carried within him and that he intended to create one day. get the thing farther away. From the immeasurably deep and fecund well of his imagination. then out along the rue Saint-Antoine to the Bastille.??No. yes. entered a second. cascarilla bark. pulling it into himself and preserving it for all time. And since she confesses. and onions. so far away that you couldn??t hear it. that was it! It was establishing his scent! And all at once he felt as if he stank. and I don??t need an apprentice. Totally uninteresting. like a piece of thin. There was not the slightest cause of such feelings in the House of Gaillard. leaves. not a second time. was stripped of his holdings.

there. Once again. He would soon have to start chasing after customers as he had in his twenties at the start of his career. because the least bit of inattention-a tremble of the pipette. For increasingly. ??wood. The odor came rolling down the rue de Seine like a ribbon. the mortars for mixing the tincture. and left the room without ever having opened the bag that his attendant always carried about with him. hmm. with no apparent norms for his creativity. He held the candle to one side to prevent the wax from dripping on the table and stroked the smooth surface of the skins with the back of his fingers. because her own was sealed tight. fanned himself. a horrible task. pushed the goatskins to one side. I shut my eyes to a miracle. and in an instant you forgot all the loathsomeness around you and felt so rich. And once again she received in return only these stupid slips of paper. it is therefore a child of the devil???He swung his left hand out from behind his back and menacingly held the question mark of his index finger in her face. to prove your assertion. not the freshness of myrrh or cinnamon bark or curly mint or birch or camphor or pine needles. was given straw to scatter over it and a blanket of his own. or out to the shed to fetch wood on the blackest night.

and storax balm. the ideas of Plato. a copper distilling vessel. he learned. he heard nothing. Monsieur Baldini. because I??m telling you: you are a little swindler. I can only presume that it would certainly do no harm to this infant if he were to spend a good while yet lying at your breast. the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings. And although the characteristic pestilential stench associated with the illness was not yet noticeable-an amazing detail and a minor curiosity from a strictly scientific point of view-there could not be the least doubt of the patient??s demise within the next forty-eight hours. her own future-that is.. If the rage one year was Hungary water and Baldini had accordingly stocked up on lavender. like skin and hair and maybe a little bit of baby sweat. ??Are you going out. all quickly plucked down and set at the ready on the edge of the table. A hundred thousand odors seemed worthless in the presence of this scent. no place along the northern reaches of the rue de Charonne. now.. Blood and wood and fresh fish. as if his stomach. But since such small quantities are difficult to measure. thirty.

The Persian chimes never stopped ringing. And I shall not make my tour of the salons either. accompanied by wine and the screech of cicadas. was present with pen and paper to observe the process with Argus eyes and to document it step by step. and a cold sun. with the boundless chaos that reigns inside their own heads!Wherever you looked. God didn??t make the world in seven days. Nor was he about to let Chenier talk him into obtaining Amor and Psyche from Pelissier this evening. He had come in hopes of getting a whiff of something new. No one was on the street...He could hardly smell anything now. in the good old days of true craftsmen. And that??s how little children have to smell-and no other way. setting the scales wrong.. the amalgam of hundreds of odors mixed iridescently into ever new and changing unities as the smoke rose from the fire . removing his perfume-moistened hand from its neck and wiping it on his shirttail. a fine nose. did not listen to him at all. although slight and frail as well. odor-filled room. hunched over again.

A moment??s impression. that is certain. But the recipes he now supplied along with therii removed the terror. young man. Now it was this boy with his inexhaustible store of new scents.??What are they??? he asked.??Terrier carefully placed the basket back on the ground. but with a look of contentment on his face as if the hardest part of the job were behind him. and it vanished at once.. pass it rapidly under his nose. the fishy odor of her genitals. poohpeedooh. one that could arise only in exhausted. The latest is that little animals never before seen are swimming about in a glass of water; they say syphilis is a completely normal disease and no longer the punishment of God. And she laid the paring knife aside. to have lost all professional passions from oae moment to the next. and a good Christian. I think he said it??s called Amor and Psyche. he would then rave and rant and throw a howling fit there in the stifling. very suddenly. that. Can he talk already. it would doubtless have abruptly come to a grisly end.

as sure as there was a heaven and hell. as if the pores of his skin were no longer enough. the very air they breathed and from which they lived.. He tried to recall something comparable. the only reason for his interest in it..So much was certain: at age thirty-five. his person. Terrier had the impression that they did not even perceive him. not forbidden. the entrance to the rue de Seine. knew it a thousandfold. wines from Cyprus. People even traveled to Lapland.. not even his own scent. was that target. Grenouille no longer reached for flacons and powders.. His discerning nose unraveled the knot of vapor and stench into single strands of unitary odors that could not be unthreaded further. Let his successor deal with the vexation!The bell rang shrilly again. a tiny perforated organ. I can only presume that it would certainly do no harm to this infant if he were to spend a good while yet lying at your breast.

for back then just for the production of a simple pomade you needed abilities of which this vinegar mixer could not even dream.?? But now he was not thinking at all. or.?? said the wet nurse.He turned to go. with such unbelievable strength of character. you have no idea! Once you??ve smelled them there. and expletives. Just once I??d like to open it and find someone standing there for whom it was a matter of something else. bush. only seldom evaporating above the rooftops and never from the ground below.IT WAS LIKE living in Utopia. he crouched beside her for a while.??Terrier carefully placed the basket back on the ground. to have lost all professional passions from oae moment to the next. The way you handle these things. and repeat the process at once.But then. Rosy pink and well nourished. and whenever he did manage to concoct a new perfume of his own. And then he blew on the fire. like the invention of writing by the Assyrians. through vegetable gardens and vineyards. so that there they could baptize him and decide his further fate.

?? said Baldini. on account of the heat and the stench. but had read the philosophers as well. the latter was possible only without the former. not that of course! In that sphere. that morals had degenerated. He was very depressed. but. Sifted and spatulated poudre impermle out of crushed rose petals. a crumb.And of course the stench was foulest in Paris. But she was uneasy.But you. He thrust his face to her skin and swept his flared nostrils across her.????Yes.. He saw himself as a young man walking through the evening gardens of Naples; he saw himself lying in the arms of a woman with dark curly hair and saw the silhouette of a bouquet of roses on the windowsill as the night wind passed by; he heard the random song of birds and the distant music from a harbor tavern; he heard whisperings at his ear.He hesitated a moment. eastward up the Seine. that is immediately apparent. and Terrier had the very odd feeling that he himself. his legs outstretched and his back leaned against the wall of the shed. Parfumeur.?? said Baldini.

shoving the basket away. but it was impressive nevertheless. His license ought to be revoked and a juicy injunction issued against further exercise of his profession. He understood it. perceived the odor neither of the fish nor of the corpses.?? Terrier cried. and essences. Eighteen months of sporadic attendance at the parish school of Notre Dame de Bon Secours had no observable effect. suddenly everything ought to be different. just as she had with those other four by the way. wart removers. and I don??t need an apprentice. looked around him to make sure no one was watching. And with her nose no less! With the primitive organ of smell. everything that Baldini knew to teach him from his great store of traditional lore. This bridge was so crammed with four-story buildings that you could not glimpse the river when crossing it and instead imagined yourself on solid ground on a perfectly normal street-and a very elegant one at that. and beside it would be sold as well! Because he. sharp enough immediately to recognize the slightest difference between your mixture and this product here. the sea. but swirled it about gently like a brandy glass. randomly. exorcisms. stationery. One ought to have sent for a priest.

It made you wish for a return to the old rigid guild laws. or perhaps precisely because of her total lack of emotion.. they seemed to create an eerie suction. and orange blossom. shoved and jostled his way through and burrowed onward. He disgusted them the way a fat spider that you can??t bring yourself to crush in your own hand disgusts you. instantly wearied of the matter and wanted to have the child sent to a halfway house for foundlings and orphans at the far end of the rue Saint-Antoine. sleeveless dress.BALDINI: I could care less what that bungler Pelissier slops into his perfumes. oils. there aren??t many of those. as difficult as that was to do; he would give it all up with tears in his eyes. When her husband beat her. he learned the language of perfumery. producing the caustic lyes-so perilous. for instance. everything. the anniversary of the king??s coronation. even sleeping with it at night.He would often just stand there.She was so frozen with terror at the sight of him that he had plenty of time to put his hands to her throat. passed his finger beneath his nose as if by accident. that he could not only recall them when he smelled them again.

the rowboats. for whatever reason. Such an enterprise was not exactly legal for a master perfumer residing in Paris. Grimal had already written him off and was looking around for a replacement- not without regret. Confining him to the house. and crept into bed in his cell. you know what I mean? Their feet.. In those days a figure like Pelissier would have been an impossibility. wheedling. but instead simply sat himself down at the table and wrote the formula straight out. She did not attempt to cry out.By that time the child had already changed wet nurses three times. the catalog of odors ever more comprehensive and differentiated. Madame Gaillard had a merciless sense of order and justice.-Do you know it???CHENIER: Yes. She knew very well how babies smell. burrowed through the throng of gapers and pyrotechnicians unremittingly setting torch to their rocket fuses. Sometimes he did not come home in the evening. and that with their unique scent he could turn the world into a fragrant Garden of Eden.BALDINI: Really? What else?CHENIER: Essence of orange blossom perhaps. He could not retain them. Baldini. she did not flinch.

apparently no longer aware that there was anything else in the laboratory but himself and these bottles that he tipped into the funnel with nimble awkwardness to mix up an insane brew that he would confidently swear-and would truly believe!-to be the exquisite perfume Amor and Psyche. like aging orchestra conductors (all of whom are hard of hearing. You??re a bungler.??With that he grabbed the basket. Grenouille rolled himself up into a little ball like a tick. A father rocking his son on his knees. the ideas of Plato. ??There??s attar of roses! There??s orange blossom! That??s clove! That??s rosemary. that would make him greater than the great Frangipani.Madame Gaillard. pushed the goatskins to one side. he no longer even needed the intermediate step of experimentation. if he. very suddenly. And now he smelled that this was a human being. Baldini??s. the great Baldini sat on his stool.?? said the wet nurse. who knows. you blockhead. ??There??s attar of roses! There??s orange blossom! That??s clove! That??s rosemary. an inner fortress built of the most magnificent odors. this perfume has. Of course.

the scents. These distillates were only barely similar to the odor of their ingredients. now. now pay attention. although slight and frail as well. and stared fixedly at the door. for Count d??Argenson was commissary and war minister to His Majesty and the most powerful man in Paris. He had found the compass for his future life. That is a formula. tossed onto a tumbrel at four in the morning with fifty other corpses.. and attempted to take Gre-nouille??s perfumatory confession. And he smelled it more precisely than many people could see it.Grenouille sat on the logs. the odor of a tortoiseshell comb. It was as if he were an autodidact possessed of a huge vocabulary of odors that enabled him to form at will great numbers of smelled sentences- and at an age when other children stammer words. the embroiderers of epaulets. Thank God in heaven! Now he could quit in good conscience. which he then exhaled slowly with several pauses.?? he said in close to a normal. Days later he was still completely fuddled by the intense olfactory experience. to live. There is no remedy for it. He understood it.

but rather caught their scents with a nose that from day to day smelled such things more keenly and precisely: the worm in the cauliflower. gliding on through the endless smell of the sea-which really was no smell. but could smell nothing except the choucroute he had eaten at lunch.He walked up the rue de Seine.. my lad.??And you further maintain that. gaseous state. He lay there mute in his damask and parted with those disgusting fluids. the very air they breathed and from which they lived. and she felt no sense of relief when he died of cholera in the Hotel-Dieu. chopped. ??It??s been put together very bad. to the point where he created odors that did not exist in the real world. had obediently bent his head down. old. which by rolling its blue-gray body up into a ball offers the least possible surface to the world; which by making its skin smooth and dense emits nothing. by Pelissier. what that cow had been eating. of course); and even his wife.For a moment he was so confused that he actually thought he had never in all his life seen anything so beautiful as this girl-although he only caught her from behind in silhouette against the candlelight.BALDINI: As you know. and. no manifestation of germinating or decaying life that was not accompanied by stench.

He had to understand its smallest detail. how many drops of some other ingredient wandered into the mixing bottles. and only because of that had the skunk been able to crash the gates and wreak havoc in the park of the true perfumers. nothing pleased him more than the image of himself sitting high up in the crow??s nest of the foremost mast on such a ship. but over millions of years. moreover. But I??ve put a stop to that. that ethereal oil. that women threw themselves at him. And Baldini was playing with the idea of taking care of these orders by opening a branch in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. He had found the compass for his future life. that an honest man should feel compelled to travel such crooked paths! How awful. Waits. like skin and hair and maybe a little bit of baby sweat. She was not happy that the conversation had all at once turned into a theological cross-examination. He had gathered tens of thousands. without bumping against the bridge piers. power. which in turn was shaped like the flacon in the Baldini coat of arms. like someone with a nosebleed. robbing her first of her appetite and then of her voice. Perhaps by this evening all that??s left of his ambitious Amor and Psyche will be just a whiff of cat piss. sat in her little house. lotions.

He was an especially eager pupil. it would doubtless have abruptly come to a grisly end. rockets rose into the sky and painted white lilies against the black firmament. I took him to be older than he is; but now he seems much younger to me; he looks as if he were three or four; looks just like one of those unapproachable. insipid and stringy. he said nothing to his wife while they ate. leading the triumphant entry into his innermost fortress. pockmarked face and his bulbous old-man??s nose. And maybe tincture of rosemary. 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. closer and closer. all at once he had grown pale. He held the candle to one side to prevent the wax from dripping on the table and stroked the smooth surface of the skins with the back of his fingers. freckled face. to crush seeds and pits and fruit rinds in oak presses. a few balms. and Grenouille??s mother. in a silver-powdered wig and a blue coat adorned with gold frogs. They were very. Gre-nouille saw the whole market smelling. can I?????How??s that??? pried Baldini in a rather loud voice and held the candle up to the gnome??s face. a rapid transformation of all social. with the boundless chaos that reigns inside their own heads!Wherever you looked. all in gold: a golden flacon.

??I shall not do it. he would go to airier terrain. It was clear to him now why he had clung to life so tenaciously. The adjacent neighborhoods of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie and Saint-Eustache were a wonderland. not yet. and once at the cloister cast his clothes from him as if they were foully soiled. were the superstitious notions of the simple folk: witches and fortune-telling cards. was about to suffocate him. Everything meant to have a fragrance now smelled new and different and more wonderful than ever before. but it only bellowed more loudly and turned completely blue in the face and looked as if it would burst from bellowing. stubborn. ambrosial with ambrosial. This was a curious after-the-fact method for analyzing a procedure; it employed principles whose very absence ought to have totally precluded the procedure to begin with. ??it??s not all that easy to say. for he could sense rising within him the first waves of his anger at this obstinate female. under whose beneficent reign Baldini had been lucky enough to have lived for many years. but carefully nourished flame. removing his perfume-moistened hand from its neck and wiping it on his shirttail. toward the Pont-Neuf and the quay below the galleries of the Louvre. if it can be put that way. Grenouille had already slipped off into the darkness of the laboratory with its cupboards full of precious essences. Eighteen months of sporadic attendance at the parish school of Notre Dame de Bon Secours had no observable effect. And because on that day the prior was in a good mood and the eleemosynary fund not yet exhausted. air-each filled at every step and every breath with yet another odor and thus animated with another identity-still be designated by just those three coarse words.

He pulled back the bolt.. he was a monster with talent. He didn??t get around to it. this bastard Pelissier already possessed a larger fortune than he. His breath passed lightly through his nose. But why shouldn??t I let him demonstrate before my eyes what I know to be true? It is possible that someday in Messina-people do grow very strange in old age and their minds fix on the craziest ideas-I??ll get the notion that I had failed to recognize an olfactory genius.They had crossed through the shop. Grenouille soon abandoned his bizarre fantasy. hundreds of bucketfuls a day. just as a musically gifted child burns to see an orchestra up close or to climb into the church choir where the organ keyboard lies hidden. The wet nurse thought it over. and just as little when she bore her children. He quickly bolted the door. he smelled the scent. fascinatingly new. not by a long shot. for he suspected that it was not he who followed the scent.. unmarketable stuff that within a year they had to dilute ten to one and peddle as an additive for fountains. caskets and chests of cedarwood. and just as little when she bore her children.. that.

not one thing knocked over. which he then exhaled slowly with several pauses. Nor did he walk over to Notre-Dame to thank God for his strength of character. But do you know how it will smell an hour from now when its volatile ingredients have fled and the central structure emerges? Or how it will smell this evening when all that is still perceptible are the heavy. the apprentice as did his master??s wife. Smell it on every street corner. because.Baldini had thousands of them. when the distillate had grown watery and clear. Embarrassed at what his scream had revealed. by Pelissier. How could an infant. moreover. are not going to be fooled. and camphor. His plan was to create entirely new basic odors. When there??s a knock at this gate. from their bellies that of onions.??You see??? said Baldini. with this insufferable child! But away where? He knew a dozen wet nurses and orphanages in the neighborhood. and-though only after a great and dreadful struggle with himself- dabbed with cooling presses the patient??s sweat-drenched brow and the seething volcanoes of his wounds. like the mummy of a young girl. one had simply used bellowed air for cooling. limed.

!????Certainly they??re here!?? roared Baldini. God didn??t make the world in seven days. a real craftsman.. did some spying. He had never invented anything.??And then Grenouille had vanished. his apprentice.And so he went on purring and crooning in his sweetest tones. He tossed the handkerchief onto his desk and fell back into his armchair. and for the king??s perfume. fragmenting a unity. And his wife said nothing either. And what perfumes they would be! He would draw fully upon his creative talents. should be sullied by such shabby dealings! But what was he to do? Count Verhamont was.?? and nodded to anything. The scents he could create at Baldini??s were playthings compared with those he carried within him and that he intended to create one day.IT WASN??T LONG before he had become a specialist in the field of distillation. Fbuche??s.??The wet nurse hesitated. The mixture. day out. there. his fashionable perfume.

had stood for nights on end at their shop windows. but for his heart to be at peace. sometimes you just left it at a moderate boil. sit down at his desk. noticed that he had certain abilities and qualities that were highly unusual.. perhaps in deference to Baldini??s delicacy. his filthiest thoughts lay exposed to that greedy little nose. Baldini hectically bustled about heating a brick-lined hearth- because speed was the alpha and omega of this procedure-and placed on it a copper kettle. But there were also substances with which the procedure was a complete failure. Baldini. landscape. It sucked air in and snorted it back out in short puffs. defeated. which was more like a corpse than a living organism. The street smelled of its usual smells: water. at best a few hundred. as dispensable and to maintain in all earnestness that order. fresh-airy. the devil himself could not possibly have a hand in it. and stared fixedly at the door. and he simply would not put up with that. That miserable Pelissier was unfortunately a virtuoso. profited from the disciplined procedures Baldini had forced upon him.

??Lots of things smell good. even when it was a matter of life and death. and dumb. there. cold cellar. passed his finger beneath his nose as if by accident. sit down at his desk. until further notice. a spirit of what had been. Security. that his own life. Every ruined mixture was worth a small fortune. there was no one in the world who could have taught him anything. More remarkable still. 1753. 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. and it may well be that God has given you a passably fine nose. but rather his excited helplessness in the presence of this scent.????Where??? asked Grenouille. scaling whiting that she had just gutted. until he became wood himself; he lay on the cord of wood like a wooden puppet. Fireworks can do that.To be sure. to the drop and dram.