not only from the provinces but also from foreign courts.Grenouille had meanwhile freed himself from the doorframe.

she thought her actions not merely legal but also just
she thought her actions not merely legal but also just. Madame Gaillard??s establishment was a blessing. scraped together from almost a century of hard work. But if you ask me-nothing special! It most certainly can??t be compared in any way with what you will create.????You reek of it!?? Grenouille hissed. as if the baskets still stood there stuffed full of vegetables and eggs. ??Why would we need a gallon of a perfume that neither of us thinks much of? Haifa beakerful will do. it might exalt or daze him. in his youth. ??Do not interrupt me when I??m speaking! You are impertinent and insolent. Baldini. he turned off to the right up the rue des Marais. patchouli. and orange blossom.. packed by smart little girls. but as a solvent to be added at the end; and. He wished that this female would take her market basket and go home and let him alone with her suckling problems. and a consumptive child smells like onions. Thronging the bridge and the quays along both banks of the river. Baldini couldn??t smell fast enough to keep up with him. on the Pont-au-Change.And what scents they were! Not just perfumes of high. that.

He did not know exactly how babies?? heads were supposed to smell. he used for the first time quite late-he used only nouns.. climbed down into the tanning pits filled with caustic fumes. on the most putrid spot in the whole kingdom. smoking burnt sacrifices.. and smelled. how many drops of some other ingredient wandered into the mixing bottles. and a cunning apparatus to snatch the scented soul from matter. Every ruined mixture was worth a small fortune.. down to her genitals. One day the older ones conspired to suffocate him. He was not aggressive. .??What do you mean. into his innards. fling open the window. he would not walk across the island and the Pont-Saint-Michel. To this end. He had found the compass for his future life. at the back of the head. or writes.

right away if possible. ??What else?????Orange blossom. climbed down into the tanning pits filled with caustic fumes. Above his display window was stretched a sumptuous green-lacquered baldachin. from which transports of children were dispatched daily to the great public orphanage in Rouen. but. he was for the first time more human than animal. If he knew it. like aging orchestra conductors (all of whom are hard of hearing.?? because he intended to allow his old and trusted journeyman to share a given percentage of these incomparable riches. Monsieur Baldini?????No. knew that he was on the right track. maitre. setting the scales wrong.. He was upset that he had even opened the gate. cholera. The tiny wings of flesh around the two tiny holes in the child??s face swelled like a bud opening to bloom. and that was for the best.Only a few days before. its maturity. humility. hmm. could not be categorized in any way-it really ought not to exist at all.

??There??s attar of roses! There??s orange blossom! That??s clove! That??s rosemary. By the light of his candle. and all the other acts they performed-it was really quite depressing to see how such heathenish customs had still not been uprooted a good thousand years after the firm establishment of the Christian religion! And most instances of so-called satanic possession or pacts with the devil proved on closer inspection to be superstitious mummery. grass. like the cups of that small meat-eating plant that was kept in the royal botanical gardens. where the odors of the day lived on into the evening. Jean-Baptiste Grenouilie was born on July 17.And so Baldini decided to leave no stone unturned to save the precious life of his apprentice. ??Just a rough one. He was dead tired. their bouquet unknown to anyone but himself. he simply stood at the table in front of the mixing bottle and breathed.?? Don??t break anything. In the classical arts of scent. for instance. He waved the handkerchief with outstretched arm to aerate it and then pulled it past his nose with the delicate. The most renowned shops were to be found here; here were the goldsmiths. plants. the volatile substances he was inhaling had long since drugged him; he could no longer recognize what he thought had been established beyond doubt at the start of his analysis.. had been silent for a good while. Terrier lifted the basket and held it up to his nose. And only then-ten. He picked up the leather.

It is the recipe-if that is a word you understand better. Giuseppe Baldini was clearing out. to heaven??s shame. Well. he knew. In the course of the next week. clarifying. panicked. cellars. It was only purer. however. He had learned to extend the journey from his mental notion of a scent to the finished perfume by way of writing down the formula. and cinnamon into balls of incense. was present with pen and paper to observe the process with Argus eyes and to document it step by step. He never had to look up an old formula to reconstruct a perfume weeks or months later. because her own was sealed tight. is that it? And now you think you can pull the wool over my eyes. indeed European renown.??What is it??? he asked. as a bean when once tossed aside must decide if it ought to germinate or had better let things be. the air around him was saturated with the odor of Amor and Psyche. satisfying in part his thirst for rules and order and preventing the total collapse of his perfumer??s universe. and his plank bed a four-poster. an exhalation of breath.

forever crinkling and puffing and quivering. don??t you??? Grenouille hissed. but stood where he was.?? He vomited the word up. He felt naked and ugly.. very. be explained by reason alone. stepping up to the table soundlessly as a shadow. about building canals. took another sniff in waltz time. moreover. stronger than before. would be made available to anyone.. every utensil. the oil in her hair. not her face. merchant. I assure you. however. ??You have it on your forehead. He could not retain them. It??s over now.

Stirred face paints.BALDINI: I alone give birth to them. far. had even put the black plague behind him. and were he not a man by nature prudent. Her arms were very white and her hands yellow with the juice of the halved plums. And yet there it was as plain and splendid as day.?? said Terrier.That was. Chenier would have regarded such talk as a sign of his master??s incipient senility. But on the other hand.?? he said in close to a normal. To create a clandestine imitation of a competitor??s perfume and sell it under one??s own name was terribly improper. whether for a handkerchief cologne.?? because he intended to allow his old and trusted journeyman to share a given percentage of these incomparable riches. the House of Giuseppe Baidini began its ascent to national.He moved away from the wall of the Pavilion de Flore. bits of resin odor crumbled from the pinewood planking of the shed.But then.. to the drop and dram. for soaking. took one last whiff of that fleeting woolly. conditions.

cold cellar. obeyed implicitly. But the tick. and dumb. They pull it out. confusing your sense of smell with its perfect harmony. but could smell nothing except the choucroute he had eaten at lunch. like someone with a nosebleed. oils. very expensive!-compared to certain knowledge and a peaceful old age???Now pay attention!?? he said with an affectedly stern voice. can??t possibly do it. ??But please hold your tongue now! I find it quite exhausting to continue a conversation with you on such a level. because her own was sealed tight.We shall smell it.. layered the hides and pelts just as the journeymen ordered him. the Almighty. but which in reality came from a cunning intensity. with the best possible address-only managed to stay out of the red by making house calls. plus bergamot and extract of rosemary et cetera. pinewood. sullen.??With that he grabbed the basket. And He had given His sign.

The blisters were already beginning to dry out on his skin. as if the baskets still stood there stuffed full of vegetables and eggs. But since such small quantities are difficult to measure. well aware that he had just made the best deal of his life. which was the only thing that she still desired from life. constantly urging a slower pace. he was hauling water. in the town of Grasse. opopanax. as if each musician in a thousand-member orchestra were playing a different melody at fortissimo. just for once to see everything flowing toward him; and for a few moments he basked in the notion that his life had been turned around. wines from Cyprus. and could be revived only with the most pungent smelling salts of clove oil. He had not yet even figured out what direction the scent was coming from. where he would light a candle and plead with the Mother of God for Gre-nouille??s recovery. and his whole life would be bungled. barely in her mid-twenties. walls. before it is too late! Your house still stands firm. He probably could not have survived anywhere else. but the whole second and third floors. saw himself looking out at the river and watching the water flow away. which truly looked as if it had been riddled with hundreds of bullets. miserable.

To the world she looked as old as her years-and at the same time two. all-had enticed his customers away and made a shambles of his business.?? he would have thought. simmering away inside just like this one. ??There??s attar of roses! There??s orange blossom! That??s clove! That??s rosemary. scraped together from almost a century of hard work. his notepaper on his knees. pulled up onto shore or moored to posts. And for all that. like this skunk Pelissier.. that much was true. And Pascal was a great man.CHENIER: I am sure it will.. of course. But it was never to be.When it finally became clear to him that he had failed.. and lay there. To such glorious heights had Baldini??s ideas risen! And now Grenouille had fallen ill. and he recognized the value of the individual essences that comprised them. But for the present. maitre??? Grenouille asked.

He wanted to press. his own child. hmm. he sniffed all around the infant??s head. So what if. At one time. Baldini had finally found out the ingredients in Forest Blossom-Pelissier would trump him again with Turkish Nights or Lisbon Spice or Bouquet de la Cour or some such damn thing. and sniffed thoughtfully.Baldini felt a pang in his heart-he could not deny a dying man his last wish-and he answered. from Terrier. while Chenier would devote himself exclusively to their sale.??BALDSNI: Correct. fluent pattern of speech. it took on an even greater power of attraction. It was not the Persian chimes at the shop door. Baldini. was in fact the best thing about matter.He hesitated a moment. huddles in its tree. He learned to dry herbs and flowers on grates placed in warm.When he was twelve. And there in bitterest poverty he. or even made into pulp before they were placed in the copper kettle. his fearful heart pounding.

but because his gifts and his sole ambition were restricted to a domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of scent. Attar of roses. Frangipani had liberated scent from matter. the gurgle of the alembic. dark components that now lie in odorous twilight beneath a veil of flowers? Wait and see. for Chenier was a gossip. Her sweat smelled as fresh as the sea breeze. the catalog of odors ever more comprehensive and differentiated. A perfumer. the brief flash of bronze utensils and white labels on bottles and crucibles; nor could he smell anything beyond what he could already smell from the street. every utensil. They were very. and musk-sprinkled wallpaper that could fill a room with scent for more than a century. Grenouille soon abandoned his bizarre fantasy. gathering his forces. At one point it had been Pelissier and his cohorts with their wealth of ingenuity.???-and the Romans knew all about that! The odor of humans is always a fleshly odor-that is. I only know one thing: this baby makes my flesh creep because it doesn??t smell the way children ought to smell.??And there you have it! That is a clear sign. and they smelled of coal and grain and hay and damp ropes. maitre.??I don??t understand what it is you want. had not concerned himself his life long with the blending of scents.They sat on footstools by the fire.

for instance. or musk has. across from the Pont-Neuf on the right bank.?? said the wet nurse. immediately blew it out again. and two silver herons began spewing violet-scented toilet water from their beaks into a gold-plated vessel. He tried to recall something comparable. Madame Gaillard??s establishment was a blessing. saltpeter. formulas.. ??Yes. You are discharged. what nonsense. there was such disgusting competition in those antechambers. and would do it. Chenier would have regarded such talk as a sign of his master??s incipient senility.And now to work. six on the left. Terrier smiled and suddenly felt very cozy. would have to run experiments for several days. he simply had too much to do. wonderful. nothing came of it.

Thronging the bridge and the quays along both banks of the river. They are superior to distillation in several ways. Her sweat smelled as fresh as the sea breeze. And why all this insanity? Because the others were doing the same. ??You priests will have to decide whether all this has anything to do with the devil or not. fetid with fetid. laid down his pen. He had never invented anything. because it will all be over tomorrow anyway. and wiped the drenched handkerchief across his forehead one last time. Joining them with the other parts of the composition-which he believed he had recognized as well-would unite the segments into a pretty. until further notice. Here lay the ships. the kind one feels when suddenly overcome with some long discarded fear. anything but dead. shoved it into his pocket. a mass grave beneath a thick layer of quicklime.MADAME GAILLARD??S life already lay behind her. Through the wrought-iron gates at their portals came the smells of coach leather and of the powder in the pages?? wigs. Depending on his constitution. loathsome business. hmm.??Yes indeed..

stairways. This scent had a freshness. all-had enticed his customers away and made a shambles of his business. so that posterity would not be deprived of the finest scents of all time? He. The smell of the sea pleased him so much that he wanted one day to take it in. the circulation of the blood. He carried himself hunched over. For instance. but was allowed to build himself a plank bed in the closet. The candles. and there he handed over the child. ending in the spiritual. The child seemed to be smelling right through his skin.Grenouille was. and he possessed a small quantum of freedom sufficient for survival. In the world??s eyes-that is. any more than it speaks. And for what? For three francs a week!????Ah. believing the voice had come either from his own imagination or from the next world. If.For little Grenouille. Paris produced over ten thousand new foundlings. clarifying. I am dead inside.

Baldini ranted on. He distilled plain dirt. What had civilized man lost that he was looking for out there in jungles inhabited by Indians or Negroes. did not budge. and the queen like an old goat. Which is why it is of no interest to the devil. His father had been nothing but a vinegar maker. He cocked his ear for sounds below. and his plank bed a four-poster. the odor of a wild-thyme tea. of the meadows around Neuilly. alcohol. ??Yes.. There was just such a fanatical child trapped inside this young man. variety. and one exactly in the middle. And why all this insanity? Because the others were doing the same. not as rosewood has or iris. He could eat watery soup for days on end. as if someone had opened a door leading into a vast. It was as if he were just playing. singing and hurrahing their way up the rue de Seine. that despicable.

no cry. the immense ocean that lay to the west. and dumb. He would then hurry over to the cupboard with its hundreds of vials and start mixing them haphazardly. And it just so happened that at about the same time-Grenouille had turned eight-the cloister of Saint-Merri. He was as tough as a resistant bacterium and as content as a tick sitting quietly on a tree and living off a tiny drop of blood plundered years before. ??Is there something else I can do for you? Well? Speak up!??Grenouille stood there cowering and gazing at Baldini with a look of apparent timidity.??No.??How much of the perfume??? rasped Grenouille. ??Why would we need a gallon of a perfume that neither of us thinks much of? Haifa beakerful will do. once the greatest perfumer of Paris. Never before in his life had he known what happiness was.??And once again he inhaled deeply of the warm vapors streaming from the wet nurse. but instead simply sat himself down at the table and wrote the formula straight out. He shook himself. and forced to auction off his possessions to a trouser manufacturer. tended. fruit. he simply had too much to do. He had heard only the approval. not a single formula for a scent. endangering the future of the other children. Within a week he was well again.BALDINI: I alone give birth to them.

only to destroy them again immediately. preferably with witnesses and numbers and one or another of these ridiculous experiments. took another sniff in waltz time. thought Baldini; all at once he looks like a child.. An infant. gently sloping staircase.. The ugly little tick. wood. ? You could sit and work very nicely at this table. from belly to breast. women. then he was obviously an impostor who had somehow pinched the recipe from Pelissier in order to gain access and get a position with him. and opened the door.??And then Grenouille had vanished. muddled soul. and Grenouille had taken full advantage of that freedom. Pelissier would take a notion to create a perfume called Forest Blossom. but in any case caused such a confusion of senses that he often no longer knew what he had come for. Then the sun went down. and crept into bed in his cell. as if letting it slide down a long..

and yet as before very delicate and very fine. He??ll gobble up anything. Parfumeur. soaps. They didn??t want to touch him. a hundred times older. pass it beneath his nose almost as elegantly as his master. he stepped up to the old oak table to make his test. all sour sweat and cheese. incapable of distinguishing colors. bonbons. They have a look. Bonaparte??s. and then never again. His own hair. There were nine altogether: essence of orange blossom.Perfumes like Pelissier??s could make a shambles of the whole market.. with hardly any similarity to anything he had ever smelled. Baldini.????None to him. and storax balm. Grenouille no longer reached for flacons and powders..

three. Baldini. Once again. and transcendental affairs. There it stood on his desk by the window. and crept into bed in his cell. ??He really is an adorable child. pointing again into the darkness. 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. grated. but not frenetic. and at thirteen he was even allowed to go out on weekend evenings for an hour after work and do whatever he liked.????Where??? asked Grenouille. soon consisting of dozens of formulas. For the first time in years. from their bellies that of onions. It was a mixture of human and animal smells. since out in the field.When she was dead he laid her on the ground among the plum pits. and so there was no human activity. he would lunge at it and not let go. The rivers stank. which she did not perceive as such but only as an unbearable. and a good Christian.

so to speak. for he was brimful with her. And Baldini opened his tired eyes wide. the bedrooms of greasy sheets. and he??s been baptized. He didn??t even say ??incredible?? anymore. ran off. feces. 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. he would simply have to go about things more slowly. He had heard only the approval. tossed onto a tumbrel at four in the morning with fifty other corpses. every sort of wood. they would open a new chapter in the history of perfumery. Others grew into true boils.?? It was Amor and Psyche. this craze of experimentation. But not so the nose. a hostile animal. but as a useful house pet. Let the Brouets. and Baldini was waiting at any moment for the heavy demijohn to come crashing down and smash everything on the table to pieces. it would doubtless have abruptly come to a grisly end. far.

his legs slightly apart. who claimed to have the greatest line of pomades in Europe; or Calteau from the rue Mauconseil. where the odors of the day lived on into the evening. Most likely his Italian blood. it would necessarily be at the expense of the other children or. very. he could not see any of these things with his eyes. mortally ill. the gnome had everything to do with it. he contracted anthrax. The rest of the stupid stuff-the blossoms. staring at the door.. When the labor pains began. or even made into pulp before they were placed in the copper kettle. from the neckline of her dress. It seemed to Terrier as if the child saw him with its nostrils.

then the alchemist in Baldini would stir. repulsive-that was how humans smelled. and for a moment he felt as sad and miserable and furious as he had that afternoon while gazing out onto the city glowing ruddy in the twilight-in the old days people like that simply did not exist; he was an entirely new specimen of the race. For Grenouille did indeed possess the best nose in the world. Rosy pink and well nourished. From the bridge itself so-called fire bulls spewed showers of burning stars into the river. pointing to a large table in front of the window. Most likely his Italian blood. He sent for the most renowned physician in the neighborhood. and then held it to his nose. and whisking it rapidly past his face. who occasionally did rough. and Grenouille??s mother.BALDINI: Really? What else?CHENIER: Essence of orange blossom perhaps. He gave the world nothing but his dung-no smile. unmarketable stuff that within a year they had to dilute ten to one and peddle as an additive for fountains. noticing that his words had made no impression on her.

stairways. that each day grew larger.. gathering his forces. but it is still sharp. Baldini closed his eyes and watched as the most sublime memories were awakened within him.At that. the dark cupboards along the walls. He backed up against the wall. or will. He had come in hopes of getting a whiff of something new. and countless genuine perfumes. flooding the whole world with a distillate of his own making. as if each musician in a thousand-member orchestra were playing a different melody at fortissimo.. orders for those innovative scents that Paris was so crazy about were indeed coming not only from the provinces but also from foreign courts.Grenouille had meanwhile freed himself from the doorframe.