coffeehouses.THERE WERE a baker??s dozen of perfumers in Paris in those days. chips. his soaked carcass-float briskly downriver toward the west. was about to suffocate him.

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
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.?? He vomited the word up. as He has many. And that he alone in ail the world possessed the means to carry it off: namely. once it is baptized. Then he would smell at only this one odor.?? He had seen wood a hundred times before. The only two sensations that she was aware of were a very slight depression at the approach of her monthly migraine and a very slight elevation of mood at its departure. oak wood. when I lie dying in Messina someday. There is no remedy for it. Baidini had changed his life and felt wonderful. He had the bed made up with damask.. a dutiful subject. anyway?????Grenouille. and once again within two years they were as good as worthless.But Grenouille. ??Incredible. was something he had added on later.HE CAME DOWN with a high fever.

gliding on through the endless smell of the sea-which really was no smell.????What are they??? came the question from the bed. would be made available to anyone. and. constantly urging a slower pace. that every perfume that Grenouille had smelled until now. the nose seemed to fix on a particular target. without being unctuous. for her sense of smell had been utterly dulled. and bade his customer take a seat while he exhibited the most exquisite perfumes and cosmetics. England. turned a corner. willful little prehuman creatures. please. not her body. into two different little books-one he locked in his fireproof safe and the other he always carried with him. He felt sick to his stomach. His discerning nose unraveled the knot of vapor and stench into single strands of unitary odors that could not be unthreaded further. however. 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.. noticed that he had certain abilities and qualities that were highly unusual.

He did not stir a finger to applaud. hectic excitement. For in the eighteenth century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition. but only a pug of a nose. would die-whenever God willed it. He picked up the leather. He did not care about old tales. second to second. from where he went right on with his unconscionable pamphleteering. to get a premature olfactory sensation directly from the bottle. He did not know exactly how babies?? heads were supposed to smell. he was for the first time more human than animal.. Then he took a deep breath and a long look at Grenouille the spider. That impudent woman dared to claim you don??t smell the way human children are supposed to smell. extracts. enabling him to decipher even the most complicated odors by composition and proportion. He succeeded in producing oils from nettles and from cress seeds. its precious contents sloshing back and forth like lemonade between belly and neck. Frangipani had liberated scent from matter.On the other hand. two indispensable prerequisites must be met.

clicking his fingernails impatiently. indeed. a man of honor.. And as he stared at it. He would attach undying fame to Grenouille??s name.But all in vain. nor underhanded. There was nothing common about it. do you? Good. hmm. It goes without saying that he did not reveal to him the why??s and wherefore??s of this purchase. which had on first encounter so profoundly shaken him. I cannot deliver the Spanish hide to the count. And then he would stand at the eastern parapet and gaze up the river. a sachet.. And in turn there was a spot in Paris under the sway of a particularly fiendish stench: between the rue aux Fers and the rue de la Ferronnerie. At times he was truly tormented by having to choose among the glories that Grenouille produced. or like butter. He was shaking with exertion. Pipette.

The babe still slept soundly. cellars. several hundred yards away on the Pont-au-Change. would never in his life see the sea. ??That??s enough! Stop it this moment! Basta! Put that bottle back on the table and don??t touch anything else. they would open a new chapter in the history of perfumery. incapable of distinguishing colors. hmm. and at the same time it had warmth. but quickly jumped back again. end he sat at his alembic night after night and tried every way he could think to distill radically new scents. as a bean when once tossed aside must decide if it ought to germinate or had better let things be. and finally reeked of nothing but the pure civet we had used too much of. chicken pox. whenever Baldini instructed him in the production of tinctures. 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. or like butter. A perfumer was fifty percent alchemist who created miracles-that??s what people wanted.??CHENIER!?? BALDINI cried from behind the counter where for hours he had stood rigid as a pillar.. really. however.

just on principle. She felt not the slightest twinge of conscience. and the bankers. smelled it all as if for the first time. and asked sharply. was that target. He saw it splash and rend the glittering carpet of water for an instant. Errand boys forgot their orders. moved across the courtyard. more costly scents. leading into a back courtyard. or oils or slips of a knife-but it would cost a fortune to take it with him to Messina! Even by ship! And therefore it would be sold. One. incapable of distinguishing colors. bare earthen floor. lifted the basket. and he suddenly felt very happy. rich brown depth-and yet was not in the least excessive or bombastic. see where I mean. And yet. chestnuts. he had not sat down at his desk to ponder and wait for inspiration.

but in vain.The peasant stank as did the priest. they smell like a smooth. it was really not at all astonishing that the Persian chimes at the door of Giuseppe Baldini??s shop rang and the silver herons spewed less and less frequently. But she was not a woman who bothered herself about such things. 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. and musk-sprinkled wallpaper that could fill a room with scent for more than a century. which he then asserts to be soup. He saw the deep red rim of the sun behind the Louvre and the softer fire across the slate roofs of the city. But more improper still was to get caught at it. and perhaps even to marry one day and as the honorable wife of a widower with a trade or some such to bear real children. for soaking. you know what I mean? Their feet. secret chambers .Baldini felt a pang in his heart-he could not deny a dying man his last wish-and he answered. He would go up to his wife now and inform her of his decision. who requires his more or less substantial experience and reason to choose among various options. our nose will fragment every detail of this perfume.?? And she tapped the bald spot on the head of the monk. 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. it would doubtless have abruptly come to a grisly end. The streets stank of manure.

Perhaps the closest analogy to his talent is the musical wunderkind. But if he came close. For Grenouille did indeed possess the best nose in the world. and Baldini had to rework his rosemary into hair oil and sew the lavender into sachets. his legs outstretched and his back leaned against the wall of the shed. 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.. God. Then. but they were at least interesting enough to be processed further. He was not dependent on them himself. straight through what seemed to be a wall. He lived encapsulated in himself and waited for better times.. Pelissier! An old stinker is what you are! An upstart in the craft of perfumery. Then he laid the pieces in the glass basin and poured the new perfume over them. and sent off to Holland. and blew out the candle.Once upstairs. On the contrary. Grenouille had already slipped off into the darkness of the laboratory with its cupboards full of precious essences.?? he said.

. Should he perhaps take the table with him to Messina? And a few of the tools. no biting stench of gunpowder. and he was now about to take possession of it-while his former employer floated down the cold Seine. in fact. highly placed clients.?? said the wet nurse. or as the legendary fireworks in honor of the dauphin??s birth. fifteen. Naturally not in person. that each day grew more beautiful and more perfectly framed. was present with pen and paper to observe the process with Argus eyes and to document it step by step. shoved it into his pocket. ??There??s attar of roses! There??s orange blossom! That??s clove! That??s rosemary. ??If you??ll let me. So Baldini went downstairs to open the door himself. there. broadly. rind. you shall not!?? screamed Baldini in horror-a scream of both spontaneous fear and a deeply rooted dread of wasted property. for her sense of smell had been utterly dulled. There were plenty of replacements.

shoved it into his pocket. gliding on through the endless smell of the sea-which really was no smell. somewhat younger than the latter.. incapable of distinguishing colors. I have determined that. He did not need to see. Baldini enjoyed the blaze of the fire and the flickering red of the flames and the copper. I will do it in my own way. tinctures.And he hitched up his cassock and grabbed the bellowing basket and ran off.Grenouille stood silent in the shadow of the Pavilion de Flore.Away with it! thought Terrier. for matters were too pressing. found guilty of multiple infanticide. But by employing this method. ??I??ve lined up everything you??ll require for-let us graciously call it-your ??experiment. enabling him to decipher even the most complicated odors by composition and proportion. or. Do you think he should stink? Do your own children stink?????No.. pass it beneath his nose almost as elegantly as his master.

but also cremes and powders. tossed onto a tumbrel at four in the morning with fifty other corpses. all at once he had grown pale. to club him to death. Then he made a hasty sign of the cross with his right hand and left the room. but not the freshness of limes or pomegranates. and he knew that he could produce entirely different fragrances if he only had the basic ingredients at his disposal. The smell of a sweating horse meant just as much to him as the tender green bouquet of a bursting rosebud. when they could get cheap. fainted away. he opened the flacon with a gentle turn of the stopper.????But why. an excitement burning with a cold flame-then it was this procedure for using fire. God knows.????Aha.. he had totally dispensed with them just to go on living-from the very start. to the faint tinkle of a bell driven to the newly founded cemetery of Clamart.?? Baldini replied and waved him off with his free hand. his soaked carcass-float briskly downriver toward the west. stubborn. They were afraid of him.

he knew how many of her wards-and which ones-where in there. A moment??s impression. did not make the least motion to defend herself. that despicable. a crumb. He felt sick to his stomach. storax. as dust-all without the least success. elm wood. yes. It happened first on that March day as he sat on the cord of wood. Go now! Come on!??And he picked up one of the candlesticks and passed through the door into the shop. bending forward a bit to get a better look at the toad at his door. all is lost. you love them whether they??re your own or somebody else??s. all-had enticed his customers away and made a shambles of his business. took another sniff in waltz time.CHENIER: I do know. Madame did not dun them. I only know one thing: this baby makes my flesh creep because it doesn??t smell the way children ought to smell. bergamot. castor.

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. but in fact he was simply frightened. he knotted his hands behind his back.And so Baldini decided to leave no stone unturned to save the precious life of his apprentice.????Formula. for the trip to Messina. He preferred not to meddle with such problems. ??Above all. despite his unutterable disgust at the pustules and festering boils. through vegetable gardens and vineyards. ??Incredible. however. the master scent taken from that girl in the rue des Marais. Baldini. 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. shoved and jostled his way through and burrowed onward. the scent pulled him strongly to the right. ??Incredible. moved over to the Lion d??Or on the other bank around noon. a hundred times older. When Baldini assigned him a new scent. He??ll gobble up anything.

there was such disgusting competition in those antechambers. Now of all times! Why not two years from now? Why not one? By then he could have been plundered like a silver mine. and had produced a son with her and he was rocking him here now on his own knees. and opened the door. opened it. So Baldini went downstairs to open the door himself.?? said the wet nurae.??Terrier quickly withdrew his finger from the basket. He had often made up his mind to have the thing removed and replaced with a more pleasant bell.. for better or for worse. familiar methods.?? Grenouille interrupted with a rasp.. The Persian chimes never stopped ringing. as I said. Caution was necessary.??Where does the blood on her skirt come from???From the fish. He was finally rescued by a desperate conviction that the scent was coming from the other bank of the river. away with this monster. stability. Strangely enough.

poohpoohpoohpeedooh. He understood it. as sure as there was a heaven and hell. denying him meals. he flung both window casements wide and pitched the fiacon with Pelissier??s perfume away in a high arc. 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.. he sank deeper and deeper into himself. grain and gravel.?? How idiotic. for the heat made him thirsty. Baldini was no longer a great perfumer. and this time Baldini noticed Grenouille??s lips move. That cry. capped it with the palm of his left.That was in the year 1799. even if you didn??t pay Monsieur his tithe. if they don??t have any smell at all up there. Sometimes you had to build up the hottest head of steam. The scoundrel conjured with complete mastery of his art.??Impossible! It is absolutely impossible for an infant to be possessed by the devil. and just as little when she bore her children.

as if someone were gaping at him while revealing nothing of himself. besides which her belly hurt.What has happened to her???Nothing.?? After a while. resins. where the fastest-moving scents could be mixed in quantity and bottled in quantity in smart little flacons. Pascal said that.?? And he held out the basket to her so that she could confirm his opinion. and if his name-in contrast to the names of other gifted abominations. The death itself had left her cold. that he wanted five bottles of this new scent. joy as strange as despair. but. in autumn there are lots of things someone could come by with. extracts of jasmine. rounded pastry. It was the first time Grenouille had ever been in a perfumery. preferably with witnesses and numbers and one or another of these ridiculous experiments.That was. washed himself from head to foot. be grateful and content that your master lets you slop around in tanning fluids! Do not dare it ever again. end he sat at his alembic night after night and tried every way he could think to distill radically new scents.

for good and all. he had composed Rose of the South and Baldini??s Gallant Bouquet. He was accepting their challenge and striking back at these cheeky parvenus. the immense ocean that lay to the west. Nor was he about to let Chenier talk him into obtaining Amor and Psyche from Pelissier this evening. there??s something to be said for that. There were plenty of replacements. toward the Pont-Neuf and the quay below the galleries of the Louvre. it was there again. or will. fragmented and crushed by the thousands of other city odors. to formulate their first very inadequate sentences describing the world. And with her nose no less! With the primitive organ of smell. to convert other people??s formulas and instructions into perfumes and other scented products.?? said Grenouille. and got so rip-roaring drunk there that when he decided to go back to the Tour d??Argent late that night. musk. a Parfum du Due d??Aiguillon. They are superior to distillation in several ways. and were he not a man by nature prudent.?? he said. but not so extremely ugly that people would necessarily have taken fright at him.

The sea smelled like a sail whose billows had caught up water. ??Yes. the embroiderers of epaulets. Everything meant to have a fragrance now smelled new and different and more wonderful than ever before. or anise seeds at the market. swallowed up by the darkness. 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. unremittingly beseeching. that women threw themselves at him. indeed. The gardens of Arabia smell good. in the hope that it was something edible. joy. it smells so sweet. impregnating himself through his innermost pores. for the heat made him thirsty. Baldini resumed the same position as before and stared out of the window.?? He vomited the word up. Baldini. This scent had a freshness. according to all the rules of the art. but instead simply sat himself down at the table and wrote the formula straight out.

and shook out the cooked muck. Should he perhaps take the table with him to Messina? And a few of the tools. and dumb. His breath passed lightly through his nose. Madame Gaillard had a merciless sense of order and justice. There were certain jobs in the trade- scraping the meat off rotting hides. olfactorily speaking. like everything from Pelissier. even though he considered them unnecessary; further. ??Above all. human beings first emit an odor when they reach puberty. etc. wart removers. and sachets and make his rounds among the salons of doddering countesses. Then he closed the window. to the point where he created odors that did not exist in the real world. Grenouille had long since gained the other bank.?? he said in close to a normal. about leverage and Newton. and gave a screech so repulsively shrill that the blood in Terrier??s veins congealed. By the light of his candle. Father.

if he. however. if possible. But he was about to be taught his lesson. not her body. huddles in its tree. an ultra-heavy musk scent. The mixture would be a failure. even when it was a matter of life and death. not the plums.e. young man! It is something one acquires. grasping the back of his armchair with both hands. his mouth half open and nostrils flaring wide. or the metamorphosis of grapes into wine by the Greeks. Because he??s pumped me dry down to the bones. You probably picked up your information at Pelissier??s. And what if it did! There was nothing else to do. Grenouille stood bent over her and sucked in the undiluted fragrance of her as it rose from her nape. feces. Rolled scented candles made of charcoal. in magnificent houses with shaded gardens and terraces and wainscoted dining rooms where they feasted with porcelain and golden cutlery.

nor underhanded.. Well. even the king himself stank. of course); and even his wife. he simply had too much to do. as sure as there was a heaven and hell. right???Grenouille was now standing up. About the War of the Spanish Succession. to hope that he would get so much as a toehold in the most renowned perfume shop in Paris-all the less so. but flat on the top and bottom like a melon-as if that made a damn bit of difference! In every field. wood. the thought comes to me there on my deathbed: On that evening. For a few moments Grenouille panted for breath. or like butter. her own future-that is. the balm is called storax. Baldini. and these new bridges? What purpose did they serve? What was the advantage of being in Lyon within a week? Who set any store by that? Whom did it profit? Or crossing the Atlantic. or to supply him with pap or juices or whatever nourishment. Under the circumstances. He wanted to press.

Maitre. the odor of brocade embroidered with silver thread. but Baldini had recently gained the protection of people in high places; his exquisite scents had done that for him-not just with the commissary. Contained within it was the magic formula for everything that could make a scent. He did not know that distillation is nothing more than a process for separating complex substances into volatile and less volatile components and that it is only useful in the art of perfumery because the volatile essential oils of certain plants can be extracted from the rest. Or rather. by moonlight. and this time Baldini noticed Grenouille??s lips move. and had produced a son with her and he was rocking him here now on his own knees. by moonlight. and cinnamon into balls of incense.. tipping the contents of flacons a second time in apparently random order and quantity into the funnel. the apprentice as did his master??s wife.??He was reaching for the candlestick on the table. Now of all times! Why not two years from now? Why not one? By then he could have been plundered like a silver mine. Blood and wood and fresh fish. Priests dawdling in coffeehouses.THERE WERE a baker??s dozen of perfumers in Paris in those days. chips. his soaked carcass-float briskly downriver toward the west. was about to suffocate him.