clothes from him as if they were foully soiled. which have little or no scent. blocking the way for Baldini. nothing came of it. He quickly bolted the door.

Priests dawdling in coffeehouses
Priests dawdling in coffeehouses. There they baptized him with the name Jean-Baptiste. like someone with a nosebleed. This one scent was the higher principle. then.But then. needed considerable time to drag him out from the shallows. her genitals were as fragrant as the bouquet of water lilies.Here. that he could stand up to anything. He did not want to spill a drop of her scent. In the gray of dawn he gave up. And then he would stand at the eastern parapet and gaze up the river. Or could you perhaps give me the exact formula for Amor and Psyche on the spot? Well? Could you???Grenouille did not answer. had sworn there had never been anything wrong with him. a candle stuck atop it. It might smell like hair. there were winters when three or four of her two dozen little boarders died. A girl was sitting at the table cleaning yellow plums.He turned to go.?? said Baldini. the Almighty. landscape. It looked totally innocent.

instead of dwindling away. and that was simply ruinous. Now it let itself drop. Grenouille looked like some martyr stoned from the inside out. Inside the room. It possessed depth. Days later he was still completely fuddled by the intense olfactory experience.??He was reaching for the candlestick on the table. Letting it out again in little puffs.????Because he??s stuffed himself on me.MADAME GAILLARD??S life already lay behind her. and shook out the cooked muck. his body folding up into a small. perhaps because the contents seemed more precious to him this time-only then. familiar methods. railed and cursed. He. it??s a matter of money. using the appropriate calculations for the quantity one desired. Priests dawdling in coffeehouses. he??ll burn my house down. and so on. Or they write tracts or so-called scientific masterpieces that put anything and everything in question. suddenly everything ought to be different.

With that one blow. Fruit. but for cheap coolies. This often went on all night long. measuring glasses. like skin and hair and maybe a little bit of baby sweat. was stripped of his holdings. he said nothing to his wife while they ate. 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. His life was worth precisely as much as the work he could accomplish and consisted only of whatever utility Grimal ascribed to it. It happened first on that March day as he sat on the cord of wood. highly placed clients. orders for those innovative scents that Paris was so crazy about were indeed coming not only from the provinces but also from foreign courts. and when correctly pared they would become supple again; he could feel that at once just by pressing one between his thumb and index finger. It was not a scent that made things smell better. A matter of temperament. he did not provoke people. Baldini raised himself up slowly. How repulsive! ??The fool sees with his nose?? rather than his eyes. he sat down on a stool. Utmost caution with the civet! One drop too much brings catastrophe. are not going to be fooled. He saw it splash and rend the glittering carpet of water for an instant. towers.

But now he was quivering with happiness and could not sleep for pure bliss. or anise seeds at the market. But he smelled nothing. Once again. lotions. get the thing farther away.?? but caught himself and refrained. for dyeing. After a few steps.?? Grenouille interrupted with a rasp. by perseverance and diligence. and that was why Chenier must know nothing about it. to deny the existence of Satan himself. He could imagine a Parfum de la Marquise de Cernay. We shall see. Unthinkable! that his great-grandfather..?? replied Baldini sternly. scaling whiting that she had just gutted. but as a demand; nor was it really spoken. his phenomenal memory. rounded pastry. He ordered his wife to heat chicken broth and wine. True.

and a cold sun. bent over. it was the word ??fishes. and beyond that. to club him to death. nothing more. a responsible tanning master did not waste his skilled workers on them. and so for lack of a cellar. the great Baldini sat on his stool. never in all his life seen jasmine in bloom. That is a formula. as surely as his name was Doctor Procope. Though it does appear as if there??s an odor coming from his diapers. A moment??s impression. 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. ??You not only have the best nose. the liquid was clear. the two herons above the vessel. I shall suggest to him that in the future you be given four francs a week. and rectifying infusions. He had come in hopes of getting a whiff of something new. impregnating himself through his innermost pores. that blossomed there. the kind one feels when suddenly overcome with some long discarded fear.

Baldini would take off his blue coat drenched in frangipani. A bunk had been set up for him in a back corner of Baldini??s laboratory. Chenier would have regarded such talk as a sign of his master??s incipient senility. He had just lit the tallow candle in the stairwell to light his way up to his living quarters when he heard a doorbell ring on the ground floor. The inspiration would not come. It also left him immune to anthrax-an invaluable advantage-so that now he could strip the foulest hides with cut and bleeding hands and still run no danger of reinfection.As he passed the Pont-au-Change. despite his scarred. and was living in a tiny furnished room in the rue des Coquilles. that his own life. only the most important ones. ran off. it??s called storax. But death did not come. he was interested in one thing only: this new process.. he felt as if he finally knew who he really was: nothing less than a genius. yes. it??s a matter of money. And price was no object. to the place de Greve. Just once I??d like to open it and find someone standing there for whom it was a matter of something else. Then he closed the window. morals.

The perfume was disgustingly good. could hardly breathe.????No. And when at last a puff of air would toss a delicate thread of scent his way. like aging orchestra conductors (all of whom are hard of hearing. Blood and wood and fresh fish.LOOKED AT objectively. The police officer in charge.?? And he pressed the handkerchief to his nose again and again and sniffed and shook his head and muttered. she took the fruit from a basket. first westward to the Faubourg Saint-Honore. He had ordered the hides from Grimal a few days before. A moment??s impression. and cords. There were certain jobs in the trade- scraping the meat off rotting hides. The first was the cloak of middle-class respectability.Perfumes like Pelissier??s could make a shambles of the whole market. It also left him immune to anthrax-an invaluable advantage-so that now he could strip the foulest hides with cut and bleeding hands and still run no danger of reinfection. and even as an adult used them unwillingly and often incorrectly: justice. They were mere husk and ballast. But now he was old and exhausted and did not know current fashions and modern tastes. as dispensable and to maintain in all earnestness that order. The latter had even held out the prospect of a royal patent. hmm.

where life would be relatively bearable for him. her own future-that is. if it can be put that way.????Good. and he didn??t want the infant to be harmed in the process. but I can learn the names. the public pounced upon everything. to the best of his abilities. bare earthen floor. now pay attention. ladies and gentlemen of the highest rank used their influence. however. and essentially only nouns for concrete objects. fourteen. And since she confesses. Now of all times! Why not two years from now? Why not one? By then he could have been plundered like a silver mine. On the other hand. Baldini was somewhat startled. looked around him to make sure no one was watching. there where you??ve got nothing left. softest goatskin to be used as a blotter for Count Verhamont??s desk. the fellow ought to be taught a lesson! Because this Pelissier wasn??t even a trained perfumer and glover. his fashionable perfume. to get a premature olfactory sensation directly from the bottle.

in a silver-powdered wig and a blue coat adorned with gold frogs. But above it hovered the ribbon. Paris produced over ten thousand new foundlings. then. had even put the black plague behind him. ??Jean-Baptiste Gre-nouille. feces. 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. not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one. he was brought by ill fortune to the Quai des Ormes. and inevitably. with no apparent norms for his creativity. bandolines. relishing it whole. not yet. the dark cupboards along the walls. formula.. Besides which. He was no longer locked in at bedtime. snatching at the next fragment of scent. ? Who knew-it could make a bad impression. that he knew. and once again within two years they were as good as worthless.

for instance. had complied with his wishes; about a forest fire that he had damn near started and which would then have probably set the entire Provence ablaze. One ought to have sent for a priest. Basically it makes no difference. an atom of scent; no. Gre-nouille stood still. might he rest in peace. creams. ??There??s attar of roses! There??s orange blossom! That??s clove! That??s rosemary. and each time he was overcome by the horrible anxiety that he had lost it forever.??I smell absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. potpourris and bowls for flower petals. animals. Sometimes he did not come home in the evening. with the boundless chaos that reigns inside their own heads!Wherever you looked. not her face. no glimmer in the eye. like a captain watching his ship sink. his body folding up into a small. He wailed and lamented in despair. and a cunning apparatus to snatch the scented soul from matter. chopped wood. every sort of wood. they left behind a very monotonous mixture of smells: sulfur.

??Give me ten minutes. who would do simple tasks. when they could get cheap. all of them?? that he knew. She served up three meals a day and not the tiniest snack more. For the life of him he couldn??t. His soil smells. In the evening. Joining them with the other parts of the composition-which he believed he had recognized as well-would unite the segments into a pretty. the rowboats. They tried it a couple of times more. could hardly breathe. He??s used to the smell of your breast. wherever that might be. The police officer in charge. all of them. a crowd of many thousands accompanied the spectacle with ah??s and oh??s and even some ??long live?? ??s-although the king had ascended his throne more than thirty-eight years before and the high point of his popularity was Song since behind him. to be smelled out by cannibal giants and werewolves and the Furies. too.. Grenouille??s body was strewn with reddish blisters. an inner fortress built of the most magnificent odors. there. absolutely everything-even the newfangled scented hair ribbons that Baldini created one day on a curious whim.

he snatched up the scent as if it were a powder. Baldini. but could smell nothing except the choucroute he had eaten at lunch. penholders of whjte sandalwood.Grenouille nodded. Not that Baldini would jeopardize his firm decision to give up his business! This perfume by Pelissier was itself not the important thing to him. just as ail great accomplishments of the spirit cast both shadow and light. Euclidean geometry. This confusion of senses did not last long at all. till that moment: the odor of pressed silk. deep breath. night fell. releasing their watery contents. And Baldini opened his tired eyes wide. 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 if the police intervened and stuck one of the chief scoundrels in prison. found guilty of multiple infanticide. chopped wood. He did not differentiate between what is commonly considered a good and a bad smell. and for that she needed her full cut of the boarding fees. he was about to say ??devil. A matter of temperament. so painfully drummed into them. He had done his duty.

but the whole second and third floors. and so on. taking all his wealth with it into the depths. a copper distilling vessel. please. The display was not as spectacular as the fireworks celebrating the king??s marriage. After all. I??m delivering the goatskins. Thus he managed to lull Baldini into the illusion that ultimately this was all perfectly normal. He caught the scent of morning. lavender. ??Yes. had finally accumulated after three generations of constant hard work. stubborn. he was crumpled and squashed and blue. while his. or truly gifted. he explained.. who in their ostensible innocence think only of themselves. ??But once I was in a grand mansion in the rue Saint-Honore and watched how they made it out of melted sugar and cream. that was the daydream to which Grenouille gave himself up. That is a formula. and a second when he selected one on the western side.

right???Grenouille was now standing up. She was convinced that. He tossed the handkerchief onto his desk and fell back into his armchair. I??ll be too old to take it over.Slowly the kettle came to a boil. they stayed out of his way. but I??-and she crossed her arms resolutely beneath her bosom and cast a look of disgust toward the basket at her feet as if it contained toads-??I. Which is why it is of no interest to the devil. soundlessly. measuring glass. warm stone-or no. They were mere husk and ballast. he used for the first time quite late-he used only nouns. as if his stomach. Then he went to his office.Grenouille had set down the bottle. nothing more. and up from the depths of the cord came a mossy aroma; and in the warm sun. equally both satisfied and disappointed; and he straightened up. and legs as well. the table would be sold tomorrow. It would be better to accept these useless goatskins. the two truly great perfumes to which he owed his fortune. squeezing its putrefying vapor.

Grenouille did it.BALDSNI: Naturally not. He tossed the handkerchief onto his desk and fell back into his armchair. They pull it out. and that marked the beginning of her economic demise. ??Are you going out. wanted to ask him about the exact formula for Amor and Psyche. and beauty spots. The people were down by the river watching the fireworks. Maitre. Just once I??d like to open it and find someone standing there for whom it was a matter of something else. If. Not because he asked himself how this lad knew all about it so exactly. that bastard will. Only when the bottle had been spun through the air several times. and that was for the best.?? After a while. and something that I don??t know the name of. capable of creating a whole world. simmering away inside just like this one. rats.. Without ever entering the dormitory..

The second was the knowledge of the craft itself.-Do you know it???CHENIER: Yes. he thought. And not merely that! Once he had learned to express his fragrant ideas in drops and drams. Baldini can??t pay his bills. This is the end. But not Madame Gaillard. sniffing greedily. and Chenier only wished that the whole circus were already over. the lurking look returning to his eye. took another sniff in waltz time. But that doesn??t make you a cook. in such quantities that he could get drunk on it. He did not care about old tales. rind. Madame was forced to sell her house-at a ridiculously low price. stripped bark from birch and yew.A FEW WEEKS later. right at that moment she bore that baby smell clearly in her nose. And for what? For three francs a week!????Ah.????How much more do you want.He could hardly smell anything now. that is immediately apparent. and the air at ground level formed damp canals where odors congealed.

and beneath a swarm of flies and amid the offal and fish heads they discover the newborn child. where at an address near the cloister of Madeleine de Trenelle. While the child??s dull eyes squinted into the void. 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. Father. at best a few hundred. He was going to keep watch himself. night fell. 1738. Such an enterprise was not exactly legal for a master perfumer residing in Paris. carefully setting the candlestick on the worktable. but nodding gently and staring at the contents of the mixing bottle. To grow old living modestly in Messina had not been his goal in life. summer and winter. I need peace and quiet. and he suddenly felt very happy. The eyes were of an uncertain color. We shall rip the mask from his ugly face and show the innovator just what the old craft is capable of. He had preserved the best part of her and made it his own: the principle of her scent. cleared the middle of the table. it was a matter of tota! indifference to him. while he was too old and too weak to oppose the powerful current. This scent had a freshness. And that did not suit him at all.

by the way. a victoria violet from a parma violet. his gaze following the boy??s index finger toward a cupboard and falling upon a bottle filled with a grayish yellow balm. a real craftsman. of sweat and vinegar. sullen.????Ah.?? he said. I??ll make it better. He did not want. The second was the knowledge of the craft itself. He pulled a fresh white lace handkerchief out of a desk drawer and unfolded it. If the rage one year was Hungary water and Baldini had accordingly stocked up on lavender. creams. So there was nothing new awaiting him. but already an old man himself-and moved toward the elegant front of the shop. which. For instance. He shook the basket with an outstretched hand and shouted ??Poohpeedooh?? to silence the child. the tables full of doth and dishes and shoe soles and all the hundreds of other things sold there during the day. Heaving the heavy vessel up gave him difficulty. grass. so. Father.

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. there are. but had to discard all comparisons. Baldini. The scent led him firmly. musk tincture. if for very different reasons. ??I catch your drift. and in the wrinkles inside her elbow. a man named La Fosse. in such quantities that he could get drunk on it. soundlessly. And for all that. but He does not wish us to bemoan and bewail the bad times. he would buy a little house in the country near Messina where things were cheap. secret chambers . up on top. I take my inspiration from no one. and sniffed. and when the money owed her still had not appeared. Grenouille suffered agonies. only brief glimpses of the shadows thrown by the counter with its scales. with no notion of the ugly suspicions raised against you. and woods and stealing the aromatic base of their vapors in the form of volatile oils.

People read incendiary books now by Huguenots or Englishmen. either constructive or destructive. they stayed out of his way.But his hand automatically kept on making the dainty motion. so perfectly copied that the humbug himself won??t be able to tell it from his own.. yes. and dried aromatic herbs. the two truly great perfumes to which he owed his fortune. covered this ghastly funeral pyre with yew branches and earth. he. Father Terrier. a tiny. his nose were spilling over with wood. insipid and stringy. fourteen. for it was impossible to make a living nursing just one babe. barely in her mid-twenties.??You see??? said Baldini. and about a lavender oil that he had created. Madame unfortunately lived to be very. for tanning requires vast quantities of water. sat in her little house. to deny the existence of Satan himself.

as dispensable and to maintain in all earnestness that order. as surely as his name was Doctor Procope. and had dabbled with botany and alchemy on the side. ladies and gentlemen of the highest rank used their influence.While Baldini was still fussing with his candlesticks at the table. He could not retain them. who had decided now of all times to come down with syphilitic smallpox and festering measles in stadio ultimo. And that brought him to himself. did not see her delicate. 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. The source was the girl. He got himself both window glass and bottle glass and tried working with it in large pieces. public death among hundreds of strangers. and wiped the drenched handkerchief across his forehead one last time. to be disposed of. But for a selected number of well-placed. 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. Many things simply could not be distilled at all-which irritated Grenouille no end. The wet nurse thought it over. But never until now had she described it in words. for which life has nothing better to offer than perpetual hibernation.?? which in a moment of sudden excitement burst from him like an echo when a fishmonger coming up the rue de Charonne cried out his wares in the distance.. and storax balm.

He waved the handkerchief with outstretched arm to aerate it and then pulled it past his nose with the delicate. And once again the kettle began to simmer. and simply sniffs. from the neckline of her dress. 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. ??Tell your master that the skins are fine. and yet as before very delicate and very fine. The crowd stands in a circle around her. maitre. in turn. for the old man to get out of the way and make room for him. passed his finger beneath his nose as if by accident. Depending on his constitution. To create a clandestine imitation of a competitor??s perfume and sell it under one??s own name was terribly improper. oils.?? said Grenouille. Everything Baldini brought into the shop and left for Chenier to sell was only a fraction of what Grenouille was mixing up behind closed doors. the infant under the gutting table begins to squall. or why should earth. be grateful and content that your master lets you slop around in tanning fluids! Do not dare it ever again. this system grew ever more refined. There he slept on the hard. It smells like caramel. the thought comes to me there on my deathbed: On that evening.

so far away that you couldn??t hear it. as quickly as possible. yes. and so on. chips. well and good. I??ll allow you to start with a third of a mixing bottle. and a good Christian. and in an instant you forgot all the loathsomeness around you and felt so rich. thought Baldini; all at once he looks like a child. salt. stepping up to the table soundlessly as a shadow. pass it rapidly under his nose. He could sense the cooling effect of the evaporating alcohol. he doesn??t cry.. poured a dash of a third into the funnel. seaweedy. The odor of frangipani had long since ceased to interfere with his ability to smell; he had carried it about with him for decades now and no longer noticed it at all. he sat next to Grenouille and jotted down how many drams of this.??You see??? said Baldini. Her sweat smelled as fresh as the sea breeze..??Make what.

had even put the black plague behind him. For God??s sake. He did not stir a finger to applaud. he had totally dispensed with them just to go on living-from the very start. as if someone were gaping at him while revealing nothing of himself. He picked up the leather. Sometimes he did not come home in the evening. the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank of stale dust.????Ah. atop it a head for condensing liquids-a so-called moor??s head alembic. one had simply used bellowed air for cooling. old and stiff as a pillar. it would doubtless have abruptly come to a grisly end. but rather his excited helplessness in the presence of this scent. It made you wish for a return to the old rigid guild laws. perceived the odor neither of the fish nor of the corpses. I see! You are creating a new perfume. and by evening the whole mess had been shoveled away and carted off to the graveyard or down to the river.Tumult and turmoil. and once at the cloister cast his clothes from him as if they were foully soiled. which have little or no scent. blocking the way for Baldini. nothing came of it. He quickly bolted the door.