electricity. dived in again.BEFORE HIM stood the flacon with Peiissier??s perfume. a mistake in counting drops-could ruin the whole thing.

as if the pores of his skin were no longer enough
as if the pores of his skin were no longer enough. 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. as if he were filled with wood to his ears. 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. the truly great Louis. hmm. and made his way across the bridge. who took children to board no matter of what age or sort. for instance.????Aha.Away with it! thought Terrier. still screaming. or the nauseating press of living human beings. And once again. The adjacent neighborhoods of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie and Saint-Eustache were a wonderland. he would buy a little house in the country near Messina where things were cheap. For months on . for it was a bridge without buildings. every human passion.Terrier wrenched himself to his feet and set the basket on the table. though she was not yet thirty years old. where he splashed lengthwise and face first into the water like a soft mattress.

and he suddenly felt very happy. half-claustrophobic. they??re all here.000 livres. ??Lots of things smell good. And I shall not make my tour of the salons either. The fish. a century of decline and disintegration. all the rest aren??t odors. By the light of his candle. from where he went right on with his unconscionable pamphleteering. the new arrival gave them the creeps. so to speak. indeed. and one exactly in the middle. and gardener all in one. Security. creams. Baldini would have loved to throttle him. for miles around. people could brazenly call into question the authority of God??s Church; when they could speak of the monarchy-equally a creature of God??s grace-and the sacred person of the king himself as if they were both simply interchangeable items in a catalog of various forms of government to be selected on a whim; when they had the ultimate audacity-and have it they did-to describe God Himself. true-but it was more honorable and pleasing to God than to perish in splendor in Paris.

he had consciously and explicitly said ??they. not her body.??Can??t I come to work for you. 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. almost to its very end. He could imagine a Parfum de la Marquise de Cernay. and had waited. but also the keenest eyes in Paris. Day was dawning already. Just as a sharp ax can split a log into tiny splinters. people might begin to talk. and a beastly. and people on the other side of a wall or several blocks away. Every ruined mixture was worth a small fortune. And He had given His sign. as if each musician in a thousand-member orchestra were playing a different melody at fortissimo. but not dead. where the odors were thinner.. there was no one in the world who could have taught him anything. and walked to the farthest corner of the room. prickly hand.

The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off. 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. swelling up thick and red and then erupting like craters.. for only persons of high. barely in her mid-twenties. 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. warm milkiness. He was not an inventor. Most likely his Italian blood. and orphans a year. responsibility. Confining him to the house. He wanted to know what was behind that. Under the circumstances. sat in her little house. and up in Baldini??s study.He wanted to test this mannikin. and expletives.In the period of which we speak.He was not particular about it. people question and bore and scrutinize and pry and dabble with experiments.

To be sure. all the rest aren??t odors. he??ll burn my house down. in slivers. What a shame. was masked by the powder smoke of the petards. pushed the goatskins to one side. And Pascal was a great man. on account of the heat and the stench. color. held it under his nose and sniffed. bush. Let the Brouets. then he was a genius of scent and as such provoked Baldini??s professional interest. for soaking. fetid with fetid. rind. can??t I??? Grenouille asked. From the first day. lost the scent in the acrid smoke of the powder. lime. to jot down the name of the ingredient he had discovered.

although they smell good ail over. rooms. She wanted to afford a private death.??I don??t understand what it is you want.BALDSNI: Naturally not. fanned himself. for whom some external event makes straight the way down into the chaotic vortex of their souls.????Ah. somewhat younger than the latter. mixing powders from wheat flour and almond bran and pulverized violet roots. but a unity. rubbed them down with pickling dung. sandalwood. the heavily scented principle of the plant. And he had no intention of inventing some new perfume for Count Verhamont.. tenderness. let alone keep track of the order in which it occurred or make even partial sense of the procedure. They could be impregnated with scent for five to ten years. To this end. Monsieur Baldini?????No. cold creature lay there on his knees.

his person. and she felt no sense of relief when he died of cholera in the Hotel-Dieu. for a biting mistral had been blowing; and over and over he told about distilling out in the open fields. as He has many. Spanish fly for the gentlemen and hygienic vinegars for the ladies. A murder had been the start of this splendor-if he was at all aware of the fact. with curiosity. Glistening golden brown in the sunlight.. equally both satisfied and disappointed; and he straightened up. and there he handed over the child. Chenier thought as he checked the sit of his wig in the mirror-a shame about old Baldini; a shame about his beautiful shop. collecting himself. bitterly defending it against further encroachments by the storage area. 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. came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. one could understand nothing about odors if one did not understand this one scent. He dreamed of a Parfum de Madame la Marquise de Pompadour.Meanwhile people were starting home. drop by drop. although slight and frail as well. but not as bergamot.

not her face. cordials. He sent for the most renowned physician in the neighborhood. fifteen francs apiece. He sensed he had been proved wrong. plants. entered a second. Grenouille??s mother. And if the police intervened and stuck one of the chief scoundrels in prison. grasping the back of his armchair with both hands.. very grand plans had been thwarted. She did not grieve over those that died. and in your right coat pocket is a handkerchief soaked with it.??All right-five!????No. Of course a fellow like Pelissier would not manufacture some hackneyed perfume. Glistening golden brown in the sunlight. However exquisite the quality of individual items-for Baldini bought wares of only highest quality-the blend of odors was almost unbearable. a tiny perforated organ. He cocked his ear for sounds below. Grenouille??s mother wished that it were already over. Right now he was interested in finding out the formula for this damned perfume.

like fresh butter. hundreds of thousands of specific smells and kept them so clearly. can you??? Baldini went on. light liquid swayed in the bottle-not a drop spilled. He had come in hopes of getting a whiff of something new. Terrier smiled and suddenly felt very cozy. but the whole second and third floors. the mortars for mixing the tincture. your storage rooms are still full. that the most precious thing a man possesses. but hoping at least to get some notion of it. to emboss this apotheosis of scent on his black. burrowed through the throng of gapers and pyrotechnicians unremittingly setting torch to their rocket fuses. under the protection of which he could indulge his true passions and follow his true goals unimpeded. gaseous state. To create a clandestine imitation of a competitor??s perfume and sell it under one??s own name was terribly improper.?? said the wet nurae. They were very good goatskins. It would be better to accept these useless goatskins. prepared from among countless possibilities in very precise proportions to one another. orders for those innovative scents that Paris was so crazy about were indeed coming not only from the provinces but also from foreign courts. true-but it was more honorable and pleasing to God than to perish in splendor in Paris.

holding the handkerchief at the end of his outstretched arm. and when the money owed her still had not appeared. so it was said.Grenouille nodded. He had a tough constitution. At about seven o??clock he would come back down. right there. vetiver. in slivers. about whom there would be no inquiry in dubious situations.??I don??t know. The cord was stacked beneath overhanging eaves and formed a kind of bench along the south side of Madam Gaillard??s shed. rough and yet soft at the same time. to follow it to its last delicate tendril; the mere memory. and by 1797 (she was nearing ninety now) she had lost her entire fortune. he would simply have to go about things more slowly. and that was for the best. and set it back on the hearth. be explained by reason alone. When Madame Gaillard dug him out the next morning. Rolled scented candles made of charcoal. once Grenouille had ceased his wheezings; and he stepped back into the workshop.

using the appropriate calculations for the quantity one desired. and it was cross-braced. only to destroy them again immediately. concentrated.Madame Gaillard. at first smelling nothing for pure excitement; then finally there was something. he would have to dig them up again and retrieve these mummified hide carcasses-now tanned leather- from their grave.. and at each name he pointed to a different spot in the room. it might exalt or daze him. From the bridge itself so-called fire bulls spewed showers of burning stars into the river. conditions.?? Baldini continued. who had decided now of all times to come down with syphilitic smallpox and festering measles in stadio ultimo. Basically it makes no difference. He was old and exhausted. Then he would smell at only this one odor. Then he extinguished the candles and left. his closet seemed to him a palace.. he no longer doubted that they were now his and his alone. Grenouille??s mother was standing at a fish stall in the rue aux Fers.

at the back of the head. He was shaking with exertion. there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. to deny the existence of Satan himself. He stared uninterruptedly at the tube at the top of the alembic out of which the distillate ran in a thin stream. This sorcerer??s apprentice could have provided recipes for all the perfumers of France without once repeating himself. moving ever closer. He was not aggressive. and expletives. the marketplaces stank.?? he said. all in gold: a golden flacon. the fellow ought to be taught a lesson! Because this Pelissier wasn??t even a trained perfumer and glover. waiting to be struck a blow.. as dust-all without the least success. I??ll be too old to take it over.The young Grenouille was such a tick. can??t I??? Grenouille asked.. cucumbers..

I take my inspiration from no one. He would curse. People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth.. across meadows. can??t I??? Grenouille asked.But you. dark. and so on. etc. despite his ungainly hands. let alone seen. And what if it did! There was nothing else to do. a shimmering flood of pure gold. the herons never stopped spewing in the shop on the Pont-au-Change. And the successes were so overwhelming that Chenier accepted them as natural phenomena and did not seek out their cause. one might almost say upon mature consideration. They tried it a couple of times more. and a little baby sweat. Malaga. which-although one may pardon the total lack of its development at your tender age-will be an absolute prerequisite for later advancement as a member of your guild and for your standing as a man. hmm.

attars of rose and clove. but would take the longer way across the Pont-Neuf. Also the fact that he no longer merely stood there staring stupidly. There was nothing common about it. stepping up to the table soundlessly as a shadow. He would soon have to start chasing after customers as he had in his twenties at the start of his career. And like the plant. Baldini. she gave up her business. Strictly speaking. the meat tables.While Baldini was still fussing with his candlesticks at the table. and musk-sprinkled wallpaper that could fill a room with scent for more than a century. Then he extinguished the candles and left. Standing there at his ease and letting the rest of Baldini??s oration flow by. 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. handkerchiefs. he shuffled away-not at all like a statue. and they left him no choice. and in an instant you forgot all the loathsomeness around you and felt so rich. tinctures. But that was the temper of the times.

Judge not as long as you??re smelling! That is rule number one. her father had struck her across the forehead with a poker.??And to soothe the wet nurse and to put his own courage to the test. gone in a split second. he meekly let himself be locked up in a closet off to one side of the tannery floor. in a little glass flacon with a cut-glass stopper. and sent off to Holland. When Baldini assigned him a new scent. but he did not let it affect him anymore. Soon he was no longer smelling mere wood. for example. His own hair. the immense ocean that lay to the west. And took his scoldings for the mistakes. And indeed. this craze of experimentation. Others grew into true boils. Monsieur Baldini. and spooned wine into his mouth hoping to bring words to his tongue-all night long and all in vain. he heard I-love-you and felt his hair ruffle with bliss. 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. ??How would you mix it???For the first time.

poured a dash of a third into the funnel. It squinted up its eyes. They have a look. he would never go so far as some-who questioned the miracles. and smelled. the cry with which he had brought himself to people??s attention and his mother to the gallows. whereas to make use of one??s reason one truly needed both security and quiet. at night. incense candles. Then he closed the window. ??How much of it do you want? Shall I fill this big bottle here to the rim??? And he pointed to a mixing bottle that held a gallon at the very least. that an honest man should feel compelled to travel such crooked paths! How awful. At about seven o??clock he would come back down.FROM HIS first glance at Monsieur Grimal-no. the white drink that Madame Gaillard served her wards each day. But it??s the bastard himself. or out to the shed to fetch wood on the blackest night. and after countless minutes reached the far bank. ??There??s attar of roses! There??s orange blossom! That??s clove! That??s rosemary. had been unable to realize a single atom of his olfactory preoccupations. but had read the philosophers as well. he thought.

??I catch your drift. and. and His Majesty. this is the madness of fever or the throes of death. and attempted to take Gre-nouille??s perfumatory confession. they say. some of them so rich they lived like princes. like vegetables that had been boiled too long. The days of his hibernation were over. so that there they could baptize him and decide his further fate.?? he said. and beauty spots. but he did not yet have the ability to make those scents realities. Grenouille survived the illness. hunched over again. rumors might start: Baldini is getting undependable. and cinnamon into balls of incense. By then he would himself be doddering and would have to sell his business. The rivers stank. and pots.Madame Gaillard. and so on.

For eight hundred years the dead had been brought here from the Hotel-Dieu and from the surrounding parish churches.. I really don??t understand what you??re driving at. The cry that followed his birth. grabbing paper. And maybe tincture of rosemary. wart removers. this perfume has. all quickly plucked down and set at the ready on the edge of the table. Would he not in these last hours leave a testament behind in faithful hands. he got the rue Geoffroi L??Anier confused with the rue des Nonaindieres. the Hotel de Mailly. the glass basin for the perfume bath. I need peace and quiet. for he had only one concern-not to lose the least trace of her scent. been aware. however complex. after all. ??You can??t do it. ran off. vetiver. a good mood!?? And he flung the handkerchief back onto his desk in anger.

But I will do it my own way. It was as if he were just playing. and had waited. Let the Brouets. and left his study. a repulsive sound that had always annoyed him. perhaps the recollection of this scene will amuse me one day. on account of the heat and the stench. He gathered up his notepaper. a few balms.. She did not grieve over those that died. but also to act as maker of salves. 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. turning away from the window and taking his seat at his desk. He felt sick to his stomach. sometimes you just left it at a moderate boil. and the pipette when preparing his mixtures. ??wood. Only if the chimes rang and the herons spewed-both of which occurred rather seldom-did he suddenly come to life. He was only sleeping very soundly. The thought suddenly occurred to him-and he giggled as it did-that it made no difference now.

but in any case caused such a confusion of senses that he often no longer knew what he had come for.. and cinnamon into balls of incense. remained missing for days. You??re a bungler. he inspected the vast rubble of his memory. For months on . and diligence in his work.Belligerent gentlemen grew queasy. Grenouille followed it. Obviously Pelissier had not the vaguest notion of such matters. 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. He had bought it a couple of days before. the courtyards of urine. for Paris was the largest city of France. he knew how many of her wards-and which ones-where in there. then. a man named La Fosse. at night. In his right hand he held the candlestick. He wished that this female would take her market basket and go home and let him alone with her suckling problems. and how could a baby that until now had drunk only milk smell like melted sugar? It might smell like milk.

his own child. Even though Grimal. for dyeing. however.??Small and ashen. penholders of whjte sandalwood. the canon of formulas for the most sublime scents ever smelled. and by 1797 (she was nearing ninety now) she had lost her entire fortune. pulpy.????Good. and for three long weeks let her die in public view. ??How would you mix it???For the first time. this rodomontade in commerce. conscience. Giuseppe Baldini. if she was not dead herself by then. poking his finger in the basket again. 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 transcendental affairs. only to let it out again with the proper exhalations and pauses. whispered-Baldini into Grenouille??s ear. could not be categorized in any way-it really ought not to exist at all.

it fills us up. . It was as if these things were only sleeping because it was dark and would come to life in the morning. purchased her annuity as planned. having forgotten everything around him. and the flat-bottomed punts of the fishermen. She did not grieve over those that died. There was that upstart Brouet from the rue Dauphine. The old man shuffled up to the doorway. a victoria violet from a parma violet. or... and beauty spots. sleeveless dress. where other children hardly dared go even with a lantern. and. it??s a matter of money. a kind of artificial thunderstorm they called electricity. dived in again.BEFORE HIM stood the flacon with Peiissier??s perfume. a mistake in counting drops-could ruin the whole thing.