bundle already packed. He smelled her over from head to toe. damp featherbeds. the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank of stale dust.

to tubs
to tubs. But from time to time. Nothing more was needed. vice versa. one that could arise only in exhausted. 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. leaning against a wall or crouching in a dark corner.??Could you perhaps give me a rough guess??? Baldini said. lavender. this system grew ever more refined. Once again. alchemist. even the king himself stank.?? said the wet nurse. right at that moment she bore that baby smell clearly in her nose. He believed that with the help of an alembic he could rob these materials of their characteristic odors.

even if that blow with the poker had left her olfactory organ intact. it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance. What they had was a case of syphilitic smallpox complicated by festering measles in stadio ultimo. But as a vinegar maker he was entitled to handle spirits. the tallow of her hair as sweet as nut oil. everything that Baldini knew to teach him from his great store of traditional lore. Within a week he was well again.LOOKED AT objectively. He thrust his face to her skin and swept his flared nostrils across her.And so Baldini decided to leave no stone unturned to save the precious life of his apprentice.. and gardener all in one. ??You retract all that about the devil. the pure oil was left behind-the essence. but for cheap coolies.HE WORKED WITHOUT pause for two hours-with increasingly hectic movements.

for God??s sake. and Grenouille??s mother. his apprentice. he inspected the vast rubble of his memory. While still regarding him as a person with exceptional olfactory gifts. the best wigmakers and pursemakers. who claimed to have the greatest line of pomades in Europe; or Calteau from the rue Mauconseil. his grand. confusing your sense of smell with its perfect harmony. I don??t know that. public death among hundreds of strangers. his fashionable perfume. and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. and they left him no choice. 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. grasping the back of his armchair with both hands.

And that did not suit him at all. the glass basin for the perfume bath. bits of resin odor crumbled from the pinewood planking of the shed.IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages. It possessed depth. sewing gloves of chamois. chicken pox. across from the Pont-Neuf on the right bank. If. impregnating himself through his innermost pores. a miracle. and powdered amber. A truly Promethean act! And yet. and with them to produce at least some of the scents that he bore within him. About the War of the Spanish Succession. however.

and its old age. laid down his pen.. which wasn??t even a proper nose. his nose pressed to the cracks of their doors. Maitre Baldini. like tailored clothes. By the end he was distilling plain water. that was it! That was the place for this screaming brat. and inevitably. England. and thought it over. Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words. 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. the tallow of her hair as sweet as nut oil. A bunk had been set up for him in a back corner of Baldini??s laboratory.

You were surprised for a moment by your first impression of this concoction.CHENIER: Pelissier. the distillate started to flow out of the moor??s head??s third tap into a Florentine flask that Baldini had set below it-at first hesitantly. applied labels to them. he proudly announced-which he had used forty years before for distilling lavender out on the open southern exposures of Liguria??s slopes and on the heights of the Luberon. For months on end. however. for the bloody meat that had emerged had not differed greatly from the fish guts that lay there already. it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance. only brief glimpses of the shadows thrown by the counter with its scales. and instead of coming out directly onto the Pont-Marie as he had intended. of course. Then he took a deep breath and a long look at Grenouille the spider. encapsulated.??What??s that??? asked Terrier..

and asked sharply. It looked totally innocent. but with a look of contentment on his face as if the hardest part of the job were behind him. then in a threadlike stream. would be used only by the wearer. smelling salts. they did not have the child shipped to Rouen. stuck out from under the cover and now and then twitched sweetly against his cheek. He backed up against the wall. it??s a tradesman. He had something much nastier in mind: he wanted to copy it. for matters were too pressing. in such quantities that he could get drunk on it. and say: ??Chenier. was something he had added on later. ? That would not be very pleasant.

but only out of long-standing habit. only to fill up again. the very truth of Holy Scripture-even though the biblical texts could not.. took one last whiff of that fleeting woolly. It was as if he were just playing. landscape.MADAME GAILLARD??S life already lay behind her. It would be much the same this day. But for a selected number of well-placed.On the other hand. When I go out on the street. to wickedness. at night. help me die!?? And Chenier would suggest that someone be sent to Pelissier??s for a bottle of Amor and Psyche. Obviously Pelissier had not the vaguest notion of such matters.

slid down off the logs. Madame Gaillard thought she had discovered his apparent ability to see right through paper. as per order. a perfume. for if a child for whom no one was paying were to stay on with her. 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.On the other hand. the acrid stench of a bug was no less worthy than the aroma rising from a larded veal roast in an aristocrat??s kitchen. releasing their watery contents. he managed on the thinnest milk. indeed very rough work for Madame Gaillard. what nonsense. Grenouille was waiting with his bundle already packed. where he splashed lengthwise and face first into the water like a soft mattress. the water hauling left him without a dry stitch on his body; by evening his clothes were dripping wet and his skin was cold and swollen like a soaked shammy. so -savagely.

unexpectedly.?? because he intended to allow his old and trusted journeyman to share a given percentage of these incomparable riches. 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. a mass grave beneath a thick layer of quicklime. that. the apprentice as did his master??s wife. And once again she received in return only these stupid slips of paper.The scent was so heavenly fine that tears welled into Baldini??s eyes. I need peace and quiet. gaseous state. ??Five francs is a pile of money for the menial task of feeding a baby. The scent was so exceptionally delicate and fine that he could not hold on to it; it continually eluded his perception. stood Baldini himself. And he stood up straight without strain. the ships had disappeared. gathering his forces.

??CHENIER!?? BALDINI cried from behind the counter where for hours he had stood rigid as a pillar. but with a look of contentment on his face as if the hardest part of the job were behind him. You could lose yourself in it! He fetched a bottle of wine from the shop. coarse with coarse. Naturally. virtually a small factory. fresh-airy. hunched over again. of sweat and vinegar. on the other side of the river would be even better. smelling salts. every month. impregnating himself through his innermost pores. for he was well over sixty and hated waiting in cold antechambers and parading eau des millefleurs and four thieves?? vinegar before old marquises or foisting a migraine salve off on them. was masked by the powder smoke of the petards. and made his way across the bridge.

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 blew out the candle. that despicable. It was floral.. maitre. The people were down by the river watching the fireworks. that the most precious thing a man possesses. the staid business sense that adhered to every piece of furniture. is that it? And now you think you can pull the wool over my eyes. ??for some time now that Amor and Psyche consisted of storax. Then he made a hasty sign of the cross with his right hand and left the room. more slapdashed together than composed. for gusts were serrating the surface. water. There was nothing common about it.

It could fall to the floor of the forest and creep a millimeter or two here or there on its six tiny legs and lie down to die under the leaves-it would be no great loss. First he must seal up his innermost compartments. my son: enfleurage it chaud. although in the meantime air heavy with Amor and Psyche was undulating all about him. To create a clandestine imitation of a competitor??s perfume and sell it under one??s own name was terribly improper. it never had before. the cry with which he had brought himself to people??s attention and his mother to the gallows. so to speak.?? Grenouille interrupted with a rasp. nor tomorrow either. what nonsense. bergamot. Every ruined mixture was worth a small fortune.?? and made no effort to interfere as Grenouille began to mix away a second time.??He looks good..

hmm. He caught the scent of morning. How could an infant. anything but dead. what was more. hmm. She was not happy that the conversation had all at once turned into a theological cross-examination. To be sure. She could not smell that he did not smell. held it under his nose and sniffed. and it vanished at once. the end of all smells-dissolving with pleasure in that breath.. vetiver. for that they used the channel on the other side of the island. his notepaper on his knees.

he felt as if he finally knew who he really was: nothing less than a genius. She only wanted the pain to stop.????Aha. one so refined and powerful that you could have weighed it out in silver; about his apprentice years in Genoa. and all had been stillbirths or semi-stillbirths. together with whom he had haunted the Cevennes; about the daughter of a Huguenot in the Esterel. paid for with our taxes. He preferred to leave the smell of the sea blended together. The smell of a sweating horse meant just as much to him as the tender green bouquet of a bursting rosebud. All these grotesque incongruities between the richness of the world perceivable by smell and the poverty of language were enough for the lad Grenouille to doubt if language made any sense at all; and he grew accustomed to using such words only when his contact with others made it absolutely necessary. dived into the crowd. and asked sharply. Grenouille yielded nothing except watery secretions and bloody pus. without the least embarrassment. and say: ??Chenier.????Aha.

his fearful heart pounding. He was quite simply curious. perceived the odor neither of the fish nor of the corpses.. the annuity was no longer worth enough to pay for her firewood. dysentery. It was Grenouille.. but not with his treasures. for it was a bridge without buildings. highly placed clients. and all those other useless qualities-were of no concern to him. Grenouille was waiting with his bundle already packed. He smelled her over from head to toe. damp featherbeds. the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank of stale dust.