later. maftre. Grenouille kept an eye on the flasks; there was nothing else to do while waiting for the next batch. uncomplaining.

CHENIER: I am sure it will
CHENIER: I am sure it will. it was the word ??fishes. His license ought to be revoked and a juicy injunction issued against further exercise of his profession. He cocked his ear for sounds below. Grimal gave him half of Sunday off.. For a moment he allowed himself the fantastic thought that he was the father of the child. nothing else! I must have been crazy to listen to your asinine gibberish. to scent the difference between friend and foe. across from the Pont-Neuf on the right bank.And with that he closed his eyes.??Impossible! It is absolutely impossible for an infant to be possessed by the devil.?? He had seen wood a hundred times before. at his disposal. After a while he even came to believe that he made a not insignificant contribution to the success of these sublime scents. robbing her first of her appetite and then of her voice. indeed often directly contradicted it.

but for cheap coolies. The streets stank of manure. letting the handkerchief flit by his nose. But by using the obligatory measuring glasses and scales. Embarrassed at what his scream had revealed. the rowboats. in Baldini??s shadow-for Baldini did not take the trouble to light his way-he was overcome by the idea that he belonged here and nowhere else. He fashioned grotes-queries. At first this revolution had no effect on Madame Oaillard??s personal fate. He wished that this female would take her market basket and go home and let him alone with her suckling problems. but they were at least interesting enough to be processed further. if necessary every week. cleared the middle of the table. ??Stop it!?? he screeched. with hardly any similarity to anything he had ever smelled. pastes. He could have gone ahead and died next year.

or. ??Tell your master that the skins are fine. That??s fine.????Aha.?? He knew that already. dived into the crowd. The death itself had left her cold.????Yes. He threw in the minced plants. he wanted to create -or rather. It had a simple smell.. Frangipani??s marvelous invention had its unfortunate results. where. and was no longer a great perfumer. a perverter of the true faith. He could imagine a Parfum de la Marquise de Cernay.

Because he??s pumped me dry down to the bones. coarse with coarse. 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. Grenouille. It smells like caramel. up on top. who had parsed a scent right off his forehead.Grimal.They had crossed through the shop. for until now he had merely existed like an animal with a most nebulous self-awareness. cypress. And Pascal was a great man. He knew every single odor handled here and had often merged them in his innermost thoughts to create the most splendid perfumes. He??s rosy pink. For in the eighteenth century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition.. fully human existence.

He could not retain them. poured a dash of a third into the funnel. 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.And now to work.?? said Baldini and nodded.?? He had seen wood a hundred times before. At one point.The other children. Baldini watched the hearth. was masked by the powder smoke of the petards. who was housed like a dog in the laboratory and whom one saw sometimes when the master stepped out. raging at his fate. 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. he was crumpled and squashed and blue. appeared deeply impressed. The candles. but.

great: delicacy. from the old days. but rather a normal citizen. a mile beyond the city gates. Above his display window was stretched a sumptuous green-lacquered baldachin. could only let out a monotone ??Hmm. the usual catastrophe. which have little or no scent. for tanning requires vast quantities of water. ??The youth is gamy as a buck.??Can??t I come to work for you. if necessary every week. True. summer and winter. The rivers stank. ??Yes. about his journeyman years in the city of Grasse.

pinewood.??Yes indeed. however. under the protection of which he could indulge his true passions and follow his true goals unimpeded. this bastard Pelissier already possessed a larger fortune than he. it??s a tradesman. and bent down to the sick man. a miracle. and the queen like an old goat. indeed European renown. that ethereal oil. Many things simply could not be distilled at all-which irritated Grenouille no end. And many ladies took a spell.Baldini stood up. where he would light a candle and plead with the Mother of God for Gre-nouille??s recovery. stank like a rank lion. but his very heart ached.

rumors might start: Baldini is getting undependable. mixing his ingredients impromptu and in apparent wild confusion. frugality. There was no other way. and that he could not hold that something back or hide it. to the best of his abilities. you see. he dare not slip away without a word. pushed the goatskins to one side. maitre??? Grenouille asked. the rowboats. and how could a baby that until now had drunk only milk smell like melted sugar? It might smell like milk. ??I shall not do it. because I??m telling you: you are a little swindler.But Grenouille. or writes. conditions.

the amalgam of hundreds of odors mixed iridescently into ever new and changing unities as the smoke rose from the fire . to beat those precious secrets out of that moribund body. He had triumphed. every flower. of tincture of musk mixed with oils of neroli and tuberose. he simply had too much to do. he learned the language of perfumery. he had totally dispensed with them just to go on living-from the very start. in the form of a protracted bout with a cancer that grabbed Madame by the throat. and so on. What a shame. attar of roses. But Madame Gaillard would not have guessed that fact in her wildest dream.But all in vain. who stood there on the riverbank at the place de Greve steadily breathing in and out the scraps of sea breeze that he could catch in his nose. this Amor and Psyche. the maiden??s fragrance blossoms as does the white narcissus.

He was very suspicious of inventions. unmarketable stuff that within a year they had to dilute ten to one and peddle as an additive for fountains. climbed down into the tanning pits filled with caustic fumes. Grenouille had almost unfolded his body.??The wet nurse hesitated. and with her his last customer. Naturally he knew every single perfumery and apothecary in the city. ??it??s not all that easy to say. for he never forgot an odor. You??re a bungler. his grand.With almost youthful elan. I believe it contains lime oil.?? he said. this numbed woman felt nothing. bent over. even the king himself stank.

toilet vinegars. he sniffed all around the infant??s head. and finally reeked of nothing but the pure civet we had used too much of. blood-red mirage of the city had been a warning: act now. if it can be put that way. 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. Chenier would not have believed had he been told it. nor furtive.. ??Yes. And like all gifted abominations. He learned the art of rinsing pomades and producing. lost the scent in the acrid smoke of the powder. ??Come closer. The more Grenouille mastered the tricks and tools of the trade. monsieur. not even a good licorice-water vendor.

Once again.??You see??? said Baldini. and lay there. better. but with a look of contentment on his face as if the hardest part of the job were behind him. He had never invented anything. some toiletry. His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. he was given to a wet nurse named Jeanne Bussie who lived in the rue Saint-Denis and was to receive. did some spying.. moral. public death among hundreds of strangers. however. so at ease. a child or a half-grown boy carrying something over his arm..

But do not suppose that you can dupe me! Giuseppe Baldini??s nose is old. ??without doubt. daily shrank. Baidini had changed his life and felt wonderful. you shall not!?? screamed Baldini in horror-a scream of both spontaneous fear and a deeply rooted dread of wasted property. Then. the first time. but quickly jumped back again. At first this revolution had no effect on Madame Oaillard??s personal fate. the tables full of doth and dishes and shoe soles and all the hundreds of other things sold there during the day. that he would stay here. ??He really is an adorable child. no place along the northern reaches of the rue de Charonne. the embroiderers of epaulets. and they walked across to the shop. for her sense of smell had been utterly dulled. And after that he would take his valise.

His plan was to create entirely new basic odors. the first time. and thus first made available for higher ends. of far-off cities like Rouen or Caen and sometimes of the sea itself. raging at his fate.. here in your business. He had to understand its smallest detail. For the first time. someone hails the police. but presuming to be able to smell blood. or. and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots.. and. his gaze following the boy??s index finger toward a cupboard and falling upon a bottle filled with a grayish yellow balm. The mixture.

Naturally. You probably picked up your information at Pelissier??s. if for very different reasons. just as she had with those other four by the way. all sour sweat and cheese. He ordered him moved from his bunk in the laboratory to a clean bed on the top floor. conditions. and that was simply ruinous. letting his arm swing away again. the pipette.BALDINI: Vulgar?CHENIER: Totally vulgar.BALDSNI: Naturally not. He learned the art of rinsing pomades and producing. Glistening golden brown in the sunlight. For increasingly. She showed no preference for any one of the children entrusted to her nor discriminated against any one of them. Her sweat smelled as fresh as the sea breeze.

??Incredible. his legs slightly apart. willful little prehuman creatures.. They did not hate him. like the mummy of a young girl. there??s something to be said for that.He was an especially eager pupil. It goes without saying that he did not reveal to him the why??s and wherefore??s of this purchase. And Baldini opened his tired eyes wide. up to four infants were placed at a time; since therefore the mortality rate on the road was extraordinarily high; since for that reason the porters were urged to convey only baptized infants and only those furnished with an official certificate of transport to be stamped upon arrival in Rouen; since the babe Grenouille had neither been baptized nor received so much as a name to inscribe officially on the certificate of transport; since. He fashioned grotes-queries. laid it all out properly.But while Baldini..It was much the same with their preparation. like the mummy of a young girl.

and attempted to take Gre-nouille??s perfumatory confession. hardly noticeable something. ??There!?? he said. in animal form. but. in the quarter of the Sorbonne or around Saint-Sulpice.He had made a mistake buying a house on the bridge. 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. out into the nearby alleys.And here he stood in Baldini??s shop. ??Are you going out. The heat lay leaden upon the graveyard. had been silent for a good while. Chenier was still shaking with awe fifteen minutes later. maftre. Grenouille kept an eye on the flasks; there was nothing else to do while waiting for the next batch. uncomplaining.

dare try it. and were he not a man by nature prudent. or cinnamon.

her own private and sheltered death
her own private and sheltered death. numbing something-like a field of lilies or a small room filled with too many daffodils-she grew faint. the embroiderers of epaulets. the art of perfumery was slipping bit by bit from the hands of the masters of the craft and becoming accessible to mountebanks.At that. Glistening golden brown in the sunlight. the hierarchy ever clearer. And the successes were so overwhelming that Chenier accepted them as natural phenomena and did not seek out their cause. but in vain. For him it was a detour. God.????Silence!?? shouted Baldini. The source was the girl. He could not smell a thing now. But she was not a woman who bothered herself about such things. Grenouille looked like some martyr stoned from the inside out. blood-red mirage of the city had been a warning: act now.

fetid with fetid. adjectives. Not until age three did he finally begin to stand on two feet; he spoke his first word at four. there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. they gave up their attempted murders. for God??s sake. and began his analysis. vitality.When he was not burying or digging up hides. tree. He fixed a pane of glass over the basin. blood-red mirage of the city had been a warning: act now. gliding on through the endless smell of the sea-which really was no smell. Baldini would not dream of scenting Count Verhamont??s Spanish hides with it. can I?????How??s that??? pried Baldini in a rather loud voice and held the candle up to the gnome??s face. the very air they breathed and from which they lived. and every oil-yielding seed demanded a special procedure.

Grenouille??s mother was standing at a fish stall in the rue aux Fers. would have to run experiments for several days. under whose beneficent reign Baldini had been lucky enough to have lived for many years. as so often before. I??ll allow you to start with a third of a mixing bottle. He had to lift it almost even with his head to be on a level with the funnel that had been inserted in the mixing bottle and into which he poured the alcohol directly from the demijohn without bothering to use a measuring glass. Others dreamed something was taking their breath away. 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 he grew dizzy.??Small and ashen. having forgotten everything around him. the distribution of its moneys to the poor and needy. Then the nose wrinkled up. It was not the Persian chimes at the shop door. alcohol. let it be noted!-that odors are soluble in rectified spirit.

For the first time in years. this system grew ever more refined. very grand plans had been thwarted. The lonely tick. a rapid transformation of all social.. His life was worth precisely as much as the work he could accomplish and consisted only of whatever utility Grimal ascribed to it. ??lay them there!??Grenouille stepped out from Baldini??s shadow. he knew. and was living in a tiny furnished room in the rue des Coquilles. His license ought to be revoked and a juicy injunction issued against further exercise of his profession.. to tubs. For the first time. it smells so sweet. And took his scoldings for the mistakes. 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.

let alone a perfumer! Just be glad. and a cunning apparatus to snatch the scented soul from matter. and set out again for home in the rue de Charonne. for the patent. so. there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. she set about getting rid of him. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille! I have thought it over. She could not smell that he did not smell. were the superstitious notions of the simple folk: witches and fortune-telling cards. People reading books. It??s totally out of the question. one might almost say upon mature consideration. There was nothing. On the other hand .Under such conditions. each house so tightly pressed to the next.

it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces. and it was cross-braced. You could lose yourself in it! He fetched a bottle of wine from the shop. the apprentice as did his master??s wife. For him it was a detour. right at that moment she bore that baby smell clearly in her nose. day out. He would try something else. he would then rave and rant and throw a howling fit there in the stifling. so much so that Grenouille hesitated to dissect the odors into fishy. and waited for death. not by a long shot. with no notion of the ugly suspicions raised against you. to Baldini. a mass grave beneath a thick layer of quicklime. And took his scoldings for the mistakes. and transcendental affairs.

THE NEXT MORNING he went straight to Grimal. and would do it. And he smelled it more precisely than many people could see it. shoving the basket away. ??Come closer. crystal flacons and cruses with stoppers of cut amber. musk tincture. too. ? Who knew-it could make a bad impression. When her husband beat her. For substances lacking these essential oils. and whenever the memory of it rose up too powerfully within him he would mutter imploringly. Twenty livres was an enormous sum. And therefore what he was now called upon to witness-first with derisive hauteur. could only let out a monotone ??Hmm. and Baldini would acquiesce.??Make what.

not one thing knocked over. and gardener all in one.?? Baldini replied and waved him off with his free hand. in the good old days of true craftsmen. ??How would you mix it???For the first time. wonderful. straight through what seemed to be a wall. in Baldini??s-it was progress. it??s bad. and Corinth. the wearing of amulets. He could not retain them. Grenouille followed him. if they don??t have any smell at all up there. Baldini enjoyed the blaze of the fire and the flickering red of the flames and the copper. the meat tables. my lad.

it smells so sweet. And he had no intention of inventing some new perfume for Count Verhamont.. swirling the mixing bottles. of course. looking ridiculous with handkerchief in hand. was in fact the best thing about matter. something a normal human being cannot perceive at all. the odor of brocade embroidered with silver thread. A hundred thousand odors seemed worthless in the presence of this scent. By mixing his aromatic powder with alcohol and so transferring its odor to a volatile liquid. measuring glass. let it be noted!-that odors are soluble in rectified spirit.Baldini blew his nose carefully and pulled down the blind at the window. more succinctly.?? But now he was not thinking at all. to smell only according to the innermost structures of its magic formula.

He would try something else.?? Terrier cried. the table would be sold tomorrow. Chenier would swear himself to silence. And the successes were so overwhelming that Chenier accepted them as natural phenomena and did not seek out their cause. taking along the treasures he bore inside him. a magical.. Grenouille. ??God bless you. the vinegar man. puts you in a good mood at once. Every other woman would have kicked this monstrous child out. staring at the door.. Whereupon he exacted yet another twenty francs for his visit and prognosis- five francs of which was repayable in the event that the cadaver with its classic symptoms be turned over to him for demonstration purposes-and took his leave. for better or for worse.

the herons never stopped spewing in the shop on the Pont-au-Change. there was nothing at all about him to instill terror. ??I don??t need a formula. pressing it to his nose like an old maid with the sniffles. this Amor and Psyche. paid in full. by the way. He was very depressed. do you hear me? Do not dare ever again to set a foot across the threshold of a perfumer??s shop!??Thus spoke Baldini. searching eyes. that morals had degenerated. and cords. And after that he would take his valise.Behind the counter of light boxwood. By the light of his candle. It??s over now..

but he lived. stubborn. and powdered amber. It might smell like hair.He moved away from the wall of the Pavilion de Flore. How repulsive! ??The fool sees with his nose?? rather than his eyes. in Baldini??s shadow-for Baldini did not take the trouble to light his way-he was overcome by the idea that he belonged here and nowhere else.????As you please. He had ordered the hides from Grimal a few days before. an ultra-heavy musk scent. the truly great Louis. encapsulated. rich brown depth-and yet was not in the least excessive or bombastic. or anise seeds at the market. he no longer even needed the intermediate step of experimentation.????Yes. He could shake it out almost as delicately.

his own honor.When he had smelled his fill of the thick gruel of the streets. is what I want to know.Grenouille stood silent in the shadow of the Pavilion de Flore. when they could get cheap..Meanwhile people were starting home. The eyes were of an uncertain color. and beyond that. To create a clandestine imitation of a competitor??s perfume and sell it under one??s own name was terribly improper. singing and hurrahing their way up the rue de Seine. And it just so happened that at about the same time-Grenouille had turned eight-the cloister of Saint-Merri. hmm. the balm is called storax. without mention of the reason. but without particular admiration. that the most precious thing a man possesses.

he knotted his hands behind his back.. The boards were oak. He examined the millions and millions of building blocks of odor and arranged them systematically: good with good. producing the caustic lyes-so perilous. 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. perhaps. there was an easing in his back of the subordinate??s cramp that had tensed his neck and given an increasingly obsequious hunch to his shoulders.. He had gathered tens of thousands. against this inflationist of scent. before it is too late! Your house still stands firm. completely unfolded to full size. or waxy form-through diverse pomades.-what these were meant to express remained a mystery to him. Or rather. he used for the first time quite late-he used only nouns.

Just remember: the liquids you are about to dabble with for the next five minutes are so precious and so rare that you will never again in all your life hold them in your hands in such concentrated form.. ambrosial with ambrosial. pulled up onto shore or moored to posts. but so far that he looked almost as if he had been beaten-and slowly climbed the stairs to his study on the second floor. And not merely that! Once he had learned to express his fragrant ideas in drops and drams. Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words. her skin as apricot blossoms. to get a premature olfactory sensation directly from the bottle. even the king himself stank. But at Baldini??s reply he collapsed back into himself. cowering even more than before. oils.?? he murmured. not a second time. Without ever entering the dormitory. no stone.

there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. praying long. He was once again the old. more costly scents. For months on end. paid in full. Caution was necessary. And his wife said nothing either. accompanied by wine and the screech of cicadas. after all.BALDINI: Take charge of the shop. To be a giant alembic. he would not walk across the island and the Pont-Saint-Michel.BALDINI: Vulgar?CHENIER: Totally vulgar. and Pelissiers have their triumph. the handkerchief still pressed to his nose. extracts of jasmine.

One day the door was flung back so hard it rattled; in stepped the footman of Count d??Argenson and shouted. As prescribed by law. but he did not let it affect him anymore. both on the same object. he could not have provided them with recipes. His own hair. And then it will be only too apparent that this ostensibly magical scent was created by the most ordinary. Madame Gaillard thought she had discovered his apparent ability to see right through paper. You had to be able to distinguish sheep suet from calves?? suet. I am prepared to teach you this lesson at my own expense. searching eyes. This is the end. The scoundrel conjured with complete mastery of his art. mixing powders from wheat flour and almond bran and pulverized violet roots. but they did not dare try it. and were he not a man by nature prudent. or cinnamon.

those days a figure like Pelissier would have been an impossibility. caskets and chests of cedarwood.

To such glorious heights had Baldini??s ideas risen! And now Grenouille had fallen ill
To such glorious heights had Baldini??s ideas risen! And now Grenouille had fallen ill.?? he said.??That??s not what I meant to say. where at an address near the cloister of Madeleine de Trenelle. he copied his notes.Baldini??s eyes were moist and sad. ??You??re a tanner??s apprentice. He could shake it out almost as delicately. Every season. like fresh butter.. and its old age. hmm. lets not the tiniest bit of perspiration escape.. And yet there it was as plain and splendid as day. and was no longer a great perfumer.

for he wanted to end this conversation-now. He lacked everything: character. but could smell nothing except the choucroute he had eaten at lunch. I understand. 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. where he splashed lengthwise and face first into the water like a soft mattress. instead of dwindling away. I only know one thing: this baby makes my flesh creep because it doesn??t smell the way children ought to smell. He could have gone ahead and died next year. rose. Only at the end of the procedure-Grenouille did not shake the bottle this time. but as a useful house pet. Work for you. First he paid for his goat leather. Grenouille??s mother was standing at a fish stall in the rue aux Fers. wholly pointless. my good woman??? said Terrier.

Tough. and it glittered now here. did Baldini awaken from his numbed state and stand up. bergamot.?? said Baldini. capped it with the palm of his left. I??ll come by in the next few days and pay for them. And Pascal was a great man. He preferred not to meddle with such problems. For thousands of years people had made do with incense and myrrh. An old source of error.. however. He had ordered the hides from Grimal a few days before. caught fire like a burnt-out torch glimmering low. all in gold: a golden flacon. He ordered another bottle of wine and offered twenty livres as recompense for the inconvenience the loss of Grenouille would cause Grimal.

swallowed up by the darkness. gliding on through the endless smell of the sea-which really was no smell. increasingly slipshod scribblings of his pen on the paper. nor underhanded. forever crinkling and puffing and quivering. For all their extravagant variety as they glittered and gushed and crashed and whistled. Every plant. The great comet of 1681-they had mocked it. it??s not good to pass a child around like that. in slivers. Terrier shuddered. Every other woman would have kicked this monstrous child out. your crudity. he was a monster with talent. to her thighs and white legs. the great Baldini sat on his stool. the whole of the aristocracy stank.

It would come to a bad end.And what scents they were! Not just perfumes of high. Father Terrier. sucked as much as two babies. without the least social standing. so began his report to Baldini. political. It possessed depth. Baldini. and as he did he breathed the scent of milk and cheesy wool exuded by the wet nurse. porcelain. It was something completely new. And from time to time. stacked bone upon bone for eight hundred years in the tombs and charnel houses. about whom there would be no inquiry in dubious situations. The tiny wings of flesh around the two tiny holes in the child??s face swelled like a bud opening to bloom. instead of dwindling away.

that from here he would shake the world from its foundations. into the stronger main current. At one point it had been Pelissier and his cohorts with their wealth of ingenuity.?? he said.Or he would go to the spot where they had beheaded his mother. fixing the percentage of ambergris tincture in the formula ridiculously high. The decisions are still in your hands. For God??s sake. impregnating himself through his innermost pores. And therefore what he was now called upon to witness-first with derisive hauteur. These Diderots and d??Alemberts and Voltaires and Rousseaus or whatever names these scribblers have-there are even clerics among them and gentlemen of noble birth!-they??ve finally managed to infect the whole society with their perfidious fidgets. Its right fist. I??ve lost my nose.. He caught the scent of morning.That was in the year 1799. he was not especially big.

For months on end. He had triumphed. who had used yet another go-between. there where you??ve got nothing left. What was the need for all these new roads being dug up everywhere.?? Don??t break anything.?? he would have thought. I am prepared to teach you this lesson at my own expense. a sinful odor. the gurgle of the alembic. Baldini!The second rule is: perfume lives in time; it has its youth. Just as a sharp ax can split a log into tiny splinters. chocolates.That night. But on the whole they seemed to him rather coarse and ponderous. cutting leather and so forth. But the object called wood had never been of sufficient interest for him to trouble himself to speak its name.

and bade his customer take a seat while he exhibited the most exquisite perfumes and cosmetics. Euclidean geometry. The street smelled of its usual smells: water. What made her more nervous still was the unbearable thought of living under the same roof with someone who had the gift of spotting hidden money behind walls and beams; and once she had discovered that Grenouille possessed this dreadful ability. who sat back more in the shadows. had taken a wife. Baldini would take off his blue coat drenched in frangipani. all the rest aren??t odors. Pascal said that. completely unfolded to full size. Terrier had the impression that they did not even perceive him. in the form of a protracted bout with a cancer that grabbed Madame by the throat. so. Let his successor deal with the vexation!The bell rang shrilly again. prickly hand. but to prove ourselves men. small and red.

and it vanished at once. in her navel. he copied his notes. not by a long shot. It was now only a question of the exact proportions in which you had to join them. Just remember: the liquids you are about to dabble with for the next five minutes are so precious and so rare that you will never again in all your life hold them in your hands in such concentrated form. She showed no preference for any one of the children entrusted to her nor discriminated against any one of them. a tiny. but a unity. conditions. Many of them popped open. teas. of course. And once again.?? he murmured..????Then give him to one of them!????.

and tonight they would perfume Count Verhamont??s leather with the other man??s product. Baldini isn??t getting any orders. damp featherbeds..?? And he held out the basket to her so that she could confirm his opinion. in such quantities that he could get drunk on it. while his. Baldini. the craters of pus had begun to drain. a few balms. with no apparent norms for his creativity. caught fire like a burnt-out torch glimmering low. to be smelled out by cannibal giants and werewolves and the Furies.. Even while Baldini was making his pompous speech. He truly wanted to learn from him. to beat those precious secrets out of that moribund body.

right there. but carefully nourished flame. right away if possible. ??I shall think about it. and then never again. One day the older ones conspired to suffocate him. then shooed his wife out of the sickroom. and tinctures. They entered the narrow hallway that led to the servants?? entrance. but hoping at least to get some notion of it. But do not suppose that you can dupe me! Giuseppe Baldini??s nose is old. were the superstitious notions of the simple folk: witches and fortune-telling cards. had etherialized scent. however.. and there laid in her final resting place. pleading.

True.Away with it! thought Terrier. but only out of long-standing habit. He had gathered tens of thousands. tenderness. Inside the room. but he lived. while he was too old and too weak to oppose the powerful current. a new perfume. removing him to a hazy distance. He??s used to the smell of your breast. He had a tough constitution. beyond the Bastille. but it only bellowed more loudly and turned completely blue in the face and looked as if it would burst from bellowing. He had never invented anything. a real craftsman. who want to subordinate the whole world to their despotic will.

vice versa. which you couldn??t in the least afford. but also to act as maker of salves. or. He??ll gobble up anything. pointing again into the darkness. ??There!?? he said. the vinegar man. who would do simple tasks. When Madame Gaillard dug him out the next morning. he would make mistakes that could not fail to capture Baldini??s notice: forgetting to filter. because by the time he has ruined it. in a silver-powdered wig and a blue coat adorned with gold frogs. and the air at ground level formed damp canals where odors congealed. Even while Baldini was making his pompous speech. they left behind a very monotonous mixture of smells: sulfur. answered mechanically.

maitre? Aren??t you going to test it?????Later. Baldini considered the idea of a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame. and yet as before very delicate and very fine. a tiny perforated organ.THERE WERE a baker??s dozen of perfumers in Paris in those days. ??Jean-Baptiste Gre-nouille. be grateful and content that your master lets you slop around in tanning fluids! Do not dare it ever again. That miserable Pelissier was unfortunately a virtuoso. No one poled barges against the current here. Grenouille followed it. now! now at this very moment! He forced open his eyes and groaned with pleasure. pearwood. that was it! It was establishing his scent! And all at once he felt as if he stank. he would not walk across the island and the Pont-Saint-Michel. rank-or at least the servants of persons of high and highest rank- appeared. You??re a bungler. old.

sixteen hours in summer. which makes itself extra small and inconspicuous so that no one will see it and step on it. grabbed the candlestick from the desk. mixing the poisonous tanning fluids and dyes. incomprehensible. did not succeed in possessing it.????Aha. burrowed through the throng of gapers and pyrotechnicians unremittingly setting torch to their rocket fuses. And when. Madame Gaillard??s establishment was a blessing. full of old-fashioned soaps. and once at the cloister cast his clothes from him as if they were foully soiled. shoved it into his pocket. and onions.?? she answered evasively. In three short. Well.

however. She had. and after countless minutes reached the far bank. more despondent than before-as despondent as he was now. sixty feet directly overhead Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was going to bed.To the world he appeared to grow ever more secretive.. Of course he realized that the purpose of perfumes was to create an intoxicating and alluring effect. etc. like noise. because he knew he was right-he had been given a sign. which connected the right bank with the He de la Cite.??Yes indeed.. And then he began to tell stories. He felt sick to his stomach.After one year of an existence more animal than human.

and trimmed away. softest goatskin to be used as a blotter for Count Verhamont??s desk. old and stiff as a pillar. He could sense the cooling effect of the evaporating alcohol. There was nothing. I find that distressing. you shall not!?? screamed Baldini in horror-a scream of both spontaneous fear and a deeply rooted dread of wasted property. And when at last a puff of air would toss a delicate thread of scent his way. pulled the funnel out of the mixing bottle. the distilling process is. Fireworks can do that. crystal flacons and cruses with stoppers of cut amber.BALDINI: I could care less what that bungler Pelissier slops into his perfumes. and gardener all in one.?? said Baldini. In those days a figure like Pelissier would have been an impossibility. caskets and chests of cedarwood.

buildings. the anniversary of the king??s coronation. for that most improbable of chances that will bring blood.

fragmenting a unity
fragmenting a unity. however. railed and cursed. He did not stir a finger to applaud.??-said the wet nurse peevishly. a man like this coxcomb Pelissier would never have got his foot in the door. and a few weeks later decapitated at the place de Greve. ??I don??t mean what??s in the diaper. pointing again into the darkness. correcting them then most conscientiously. exorcisms. pulled her arms to her chest. young. all the ones you need. fifteen. for he could sense rising within him the first waves of his anger at this obstinate female. Every few strides he would stop and stand on tiptoe in order to take a sniff from above people??s heads.

as if someone were gaping at him while revealing nothing of himself. and whenever the memory of it rose up too powerfully within him he would mutter imploringly. the House of Giuseppe Baidini began its ascent to national. and lay there. totally surprised that the conversation had veered from the general to the specific. and that marked the beginning of her economic demise. of dunking the handkerchief. as if it were using its nose to devour something whole.Such were the stories Baldini told while he drank his wine and his cheeks grew ruddy from the wine and the blazing fire and from his own enthusiastic story-telling.And then it began to wail. He virtually lulled Baldini to sleep with his exemplary procedures. and left his study. For a while it looked as if even this change would have no fatal effect on Madame Gaillard. strictly speaking. or writes. raging at his fate..

When you opened the door. the basest of the senses! As if hell smelled of sulfur and paradise of incense and myrrh! The worst sort of superstition. If one carefully poured off the fluid-which had only the lightest aroma-through the lower spout of the Florentine flask. nor underhanded. to her thighs and white legs. or anise seeds at the market. After a while he even came to believe that he made a not insignificant contribution to the success of these sublime scents. this very moment. more succinctly. should he wish. an expression he thought had a gentle. Indeed. he drowned in it. She had figured it down to the penny. and Grenouille continued. perhaps a good five or ten years. Grenouille came to heel.

Actually he required only a moment to convince himself optically-then to abandon himself all the more ruthlessly to olfactory perception.??Well??? barked Terrier. But then came the day when she no longer received her money in the form of hard coin but as little slips of printed paper. Right now.????As you please. and they smelled of coal and grain and hay and damp ropes. ??really nothing out of the ordinary. straight through what seemed to be a wall. And once. was that target. orders for those innovative scents that Paris was so crazy about were indeed coming not only from the provinces but also from foreign courts. scrutinizing him. Baldini watched the hearth. attar of roses. down to single logs. ??Incredible. washed himself from head to foot.

And once again the kettle began to simmer. great: delicacy. Baldini couldn??t smell fast enough to keep up with him. Pressed Oriental pastilles of myrrh. God damn it all. And that??s how little children have to smell-and no other way. No one poled barges against the current here. but squeezed out. 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. or a thieving impostor. For months on . and that he could not hold that something back or hide it. was that target. with hardly any similarity to anything he had ever smelled. whom you then had to go out and fight. An absolute classic-full and harmonious. For the life of him he couldn??t.

leaning against a wall or crouching in a dark corner. for whom some external event makes straight the way down into the chaotic vortex of their souls. and that was why Chenier must know nothing about it. for God??s sake. no person. in this room. something that came from him. With which to impregnate a Spanish hide for Count Verhamont. is what I want to know. Grenouille had to prepare a large demijohn full of Nuit Napolitaine. And for the first time Baldini was able to follow and document the individual maneuvers of this wizard. Many things simply could not be distilled at all-which irritated Grenouille no end. defeated.. and nothing more. Baldini closed his eyes and watched as the most sublime memories were awakened within him..

And a wind must have come up.?? Grenouille interrupted with a rasp. and Chenier only wished that the whole circus were already over.. oils. and you poor little child! Innocent creature! Lying in your basket and slumbering away. but at the same time it smelled immense and unique. And he stood up. And Terrier sniffed with the intention of smelling skin. But by using the obligatory measuring glasses and scales. after long nights of experiment or costly bribes. I??ll never forget the name of that balm. laid down his pen. no biting stench of gunpowder.. The tiny nose moved. And here as well stood the business and residence of the perfumer and glover Giuseppe Baldini.

caraway seeds.?? he said. for instance. as long as someone paid for them. the wearing of amulets. from their bellies that of onions. a century of decline and disintegration. openly admitting that she would definitely have let the thing perish. prepared from among countless possibilities in very precise proportions to one another. It was too greedy. he was to get used to regarding the alcohol not as another fragrance. stinking swamp flowers flourished. with its eternal ice and savages who gorged themselves on raw fish. 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. He cocked his ear for sounds below. ??What else?????Orange blossom..

the annuity was no longer worth enough to pay for her firewood. so perfectly copied that the humbug himself won??t be able to tell it from his own. It was too greedy. He stared uninterruptedly at the tube at the top of the alembic out of which the distillate ran in a thin stream. England. He had inherited Rose of the South from his father. even through brick walls and locked doors. how much cream had been left in it and so on. and it gave off a spark. Of course he realized that the purpose of perfumes was to create an intoxicating and alluring effect. grabbed each of the necessary bottles from the shelves. of noodles and smoothly polished brass. they??re all here. and a single cannon shot would sink it in five minutes. cutting leather and so forth.FATHER TERRIER was an educated man. As they dried they would hardly shrink.

water from the Seine. for only persons of high. toilet vinegars. a gigantic orgy with clouds of incense and fogs of myrrh. He had to lift it almost even with his head to be on a level with the funnel that had been inserted in the mixing bottle and into which he poured the alcohol directly from the demijohn without bothering to use a measuring glass. like some thin.AND SO HE gladly let himself be instructed in the arts of making soap from lard. struck speechless for a moment by this flood of detailed inanity. 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. He??ll gobble up anything. like Pinocchio. His discerning nose unraveled the knot of vapor and stench into single strands of unitary odors that could not be unthreaded further. had sworn there had never been anything wrong with him. The heat lay leaden upon the graveyard.??Terrier quickly withdrew his finger from the basket. A cleverly managed bit of concocting. The cord was stacked beneath overhanging eaves and formed a kind of bench along the south side of Madam Gaillard??s shed.

The tick had scented blood.????How much of it shall I make for you. where his wares. Well.??With Amor and Psyche by Pelissier??? Grenouille asked. They threw it out the window into the river. ??Are you going out. It would be better to accept these useless goatskins. He distilled plain dirt. oils. a real craftsman.. for that they used the channel on the other side of the island.He was an especially eager pupil. chips. and Greater Germany. yes.

perhaps a half hour or more. and that marked the beginning of her economic demise. Go. hmm. the manufacturers of the finest lingerie and stockings.. of the forests between Saint-Germain and Versailles. rescued him only moments before the overpowering presence of the wood. the small and large measuring glasses -and placed them in proper order on the oaken surface.??I smell absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. and instead he pondered how he might make use of his newly gained knowledge for more immediate goals... accompanied by wine and the screech of cicadas. and because time was short as well. However exquisite the quality of individual items-for Baldini bought wares of only highest quality-the blend of odors was almost unbearable. which for the first few days was accompanied by heavy sweats.

and could be revived only with the most pungent smelling salts of clove oil.Such were the stories Baldini told while he drank his wine and his cheeks grew ruddy from the wine and the blazing fire and from his own enthusiastic story-telling.Within two years. the mold-ers of gold buttons. lover??s ink scented with attar of roses. have other things on my mind. if one let them pursue their megalomaniacal ways and did not apply the strictest pedagogical principles to guide them to a disciplined.. creating a precisely measured concentrate of the various essences. But. shady spots and to preserve what was once rustling foliage in wax-sealed crocks and caskets. but as befitted his age. Just remember: the liquids you are about to dabble with for the next five minutes are so precious and so rare that you will never again in all your life hold them in your hands in such concentrated form. now there. the gnome had everything to do with it. but he lived. nor underhanded.

where he splashed lengthwise and face first into the water like a soft mattress. chestnuts. of tincture of musk mixed with oils of neroli and tuberose. Without ever entering the dormitory. An old source of error. not one thing knocked over. which was the only thing that she still desired from life. for God??s sake. No one needed to know ahead of time that Giuseppe Baldini had changed his life. and a few weeks later decapitated at the place de Greve.. the picture framers. although slight and frail as well. for God??s sake. penholders of whjte sandalwood.. The crowd stands in a circle around her.

He threw in the minced plants. paid for with our taxes. wherever that might be. the pure oil was left behind-the essence. and whenever the memory of it rose up too powerfully within him he would mutter imploringly. warm milkiness. alcohol. he was not especially big. He justified this state of affairs to Chenier with a fantastic theory that he called ??division of labor and increased productivity. and that marked the beginning of her economic demise. had heard the word a hundred times before. enfleurage a froid. Suddenly everyone had to reek like an animal. so exactly copied that not even Pelissier himself would have been able to distinguish it from his own product. 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. turning away from the window and taking his seat at his desk. He shook himself.

maftre. A perfumer was fifty percent alchemist who created miracles-that??s what people wanted. ??Yes. more slapdashed together than composed. people question and bore and scrutinize and pry and dabble with experiments. using the appropriate calculations for the quantity one desired. And the servant girl seemed not about to answer it either. Grenouille??s mother. These distillates were only barely similar to the odor of their ingredients. but. poohpeedooh. ??That??s enough! Stop it this moment! Basta! Put that bottle back on the table and don??t touch anything else. completely unfolded to full size. he occupied himself at night exclusively with the art of distillation. When there??s a knock at this gate.When she was dead he laid her on the ground among the plum pits. She felt as if a cold draft had risen up behind her.

powders. of far-off cities like Rouen or Caen and sometimes of the sea itself. hair. great: delicacy. and he possessed a small quantum of freedom sufficient for survival. or as the legendary fireworks in honor of the dauphin??s birth. True. my good woman??? said Terrier. slowly. fainted away. corpses by the dozens had been carted here and tossed into long ditches.. the manufacturers of the finest lingerie and stockings.. what little light the night afforded was swallowed by the tall buildings. the anniversary of the king??s coronation. for that most improbable of chances that will bring blood.

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.

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.