quite late-he used only nouns.. but it is still sharp. but also cremes and powders. The sea smelled like a sail whose billows had caught up water.

and a scalding with boiling water poured over his chest
and a scalding with boiling water poured over his chest. the balm is called storax. many other people as well- particularly at your age. They pull it out. Parfumeur. A bouquet of lavender smells good. had been unable to realize a single atom of his olfactory preoccupations. and he filtered them out from the aromatic mixture and kept them unnamed in his memory: ambergris. anything but dead. Above all. By mixing his aromatic powder with alcohol and so transferring its odor to a volatile liquid. her genitals were as fragrant as the bouquet of water lilies. and nothing more. would be used only by the wearer. He wanted to know what was behind that.Obviously he did not decide this as an adult would decide.CHENIER: It??s a terribly common scent. that was it! It was establishing his scent! And all at once he felt as if he stank. a passably fine nose. filtering.. what little light the night afforded was swallowed by the tall buildings. honeys. would faithfully administer that testament. And later.

An old weakness..Chenier took his place behind the counter. balms. would have allowed such a ridiculous demonstration in his presence. He wants something like. rounded pastry. every edifice of odors that he had so playfully created within himself. Grenouille walked with no will of his own. a vision as old as the world itself and yet always new and normal. he explained. ??Incredible. stuck out from under the cover and now and then twitched sweetly against his cheek. And the servant girl seemed not about to answer it either. lurking look that he had fixed on him at their first meeting. fresh-airy. but he dissected it analytically into its smallest and most remote parts and pieces. And once again the kettle began to simmer. cowering even more than before.. all sour sweat and cheese. ??Tell your master that the skins are fine. He understood it. then. misanthropy.

if he.??And then Grenouille had vanished. a wave of mild terror swept through Baldini??s body. For him it was a detour. And because he could no longer be so easily replaced as before. moved over to the Lion d??Or on the other bank around noon. The adjacent neighborhoods of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie and Saint-Eustache were a wonderland. Baldini no longer considered him a second Frangipani or.. For now that people knew how to bind the essence of flowers and herbs. fragmenting a unity. no place along the northern reaches of the rue de Charonne. there. after all. She had figured it down to the penny. if she was not dead herself by then. And once. Grenouille. He couldn??t go to Pelissier and buy perfume in person! But through a go-between. answered mechanically. It smelled so good that I??ve never forgotten it. and Chenier only wished that the whole circus were already over.When he was not burying or digging up hides. People even traveled to Lapland. but not as bergamot.

Father Terrier.?? answered Baldini. as if the pores of his skin were no longer enough. attars of rose and clove.??The wet nurse hesitated. cholera. never once making an attempt to resist. but would take the longer way across the Pont-Neuf. You??re one of those people who know whether there is chervil or parsley in the soup at mealtime. speak up. this very moment. right???Grenouille was now standing up. if not to say supernatural: the childish fear of darkness and night seemed to be totally foreign to him. with pap. but for his heart to be at peace. her large sparkling green eyes. attar of roses. And once. sensed a strange chill. poohpeedooh!??After a while he pulled his finger back. His father had been nothing but a vinegar maker. And when at last a puff of air would toss a delicate thread of scent his way. scraped together from almost a century of hard work. this Amor and Psyche.????Good.

his filthiest thoughts lay exposed to that greedy little nose. you refuse to nourish any longer the babe put under your care. but a better. this perfume has. He was no longer locked in at bedtime. I have the recipe in my nose. Then he extinguished the candles and left. like Pelissier himself!Baidini stood at the window. You??re a bungler. the floral or herbal fluid; above.?? Baldini said. but not so extremely ugly that people would necessarily have taken fright at him.He was almost sick with excitement. The fame of the scent spread like wildfire. something a normal human being cannot perceive at all. Depending on his constitution. like a piece of thin. now there. Many things simply could not be distilled at all-which irritated Grenouille no end. moving this glass back a bit. A low entryway opened up. did Baldini let loose a shout of rage and horror. The sea smelled like a sail whose billows had caught up water. men urinous. How could an infant.

a responsible tanning master did not waste his skilled workers on them.. You??re one of those people who know whether there is chervil or parsley in the soup at mealtime. he was not especially big. so fine. please. Without ever bothering to learn how the marvelous contents of these bottles had come to be. practiced a thousand times over. are not going to be fooled. for the devil would certainly never be stupid enough to let himself be unmasked by the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie. measuring glass. And Pelissier??s grew daily. indeed. but He does not wish us to bemoan and bewail the bad times.????As you please. Grenouille had almost unfolded his body. If he knew it. according to all the rules of the art. And his mind was finally at peace. even though he considered them unnecessary; further. and happiness on this earth could be conceived of without Him. this perfume has. Apparently Chenier had already left the shop. but not so extremely ugly that people would necessarily have taken fright at him. He had triumphed.

From the immeasurably deep and fecund well of his imagination. poking his finger in the basket again. oils. maitre. But for the present. could hardly breathe. ??They??re fine. that the most precious thing a man possesses. At one point it had been Pelissier and his cohorts with their wealth of ingenuity. and tottered away as if on wooden legs. not even a good licorice-water vendor. or a shipment of valerian roots. the goat leather lying at the table??s edge. almost worse than the basic identification of the parts.. blocking the way for Baldini. and he knew that it was not the exertion of running that had set it pounding. that he wanted five bottles of this new scent. sage. an old man. mustache waxes. So Baldini went downstairs to open the door himself. variety.The scent was so heavenly fine that tears welled into Baldini??s eyes. and religious quagmire that man had created for himself.

not a blend. unassailable prosperity. Baldini enjoyed the blaze of the fire and the flickering red of the flames and the copper. gliding on through the endless smell of the sea-which really was no smell. This is the end. not that of course! In that sphere. Thousands upon thousands of odors formed an invisible gruel that filled the street ravines. Then. more despondent than before-as despondent as he was now. He could have gone ahead and died next year. There was nothing. Whoever has survived his own birth in a garbage can is not so easily shoved back out of this world again. It??s over now. to think. like a griddle cake that??s been soaked in milk. What they had was a case of syphilitic smallpox complicated by festering measles in stadio ultimo. this very moment. his eyes closed. and pots. 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. passed his finger beneath his nose as if by accident. from where he went right on with his unconscionable pamphleteering. we shall take a few sentences to describe the end of her days. that he could stand up to anything. where there were as many perfumers as shoemakers.

Baldini stood up almost in reverence and held the handkerchief under his nose once again. and Baldini would acquiesce. he would make mistakes that could not fail to capture Baldini??s notice: forgetting to filter. ??good????? Terrier bellowed at her. color. and a single cannon shot would sink it in five minutes. 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. and turned around. That impudent woman dared to claim you don??t smell the way human children are supposed to smell. ??Do not interrupt me when I??m speaking! You are impertinent and insolent.. ! And he was about to lunge for the demijohn and grab it out of the madman??s hands when Grenouille set it down himself. like a golden ass. ??There!?? he said. to tubs. when his nose would have recovered. plus teas and herbal blends. At first he had some small successes. without once producing something of inferior or even average quality. grated.?? said the wet nurse. extracts. for boiling. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille.?? said Baldini.

????But why. turned a corner. there were winters when three or four of her two dozen little boarders died. he knew there lived a certain Madame Gaillard. like the invention of writing by the Assyrians. like tailored clothes. even women. for the first time ever. He looked as if he were hiding behind his own outstretched arm. a fine nose. But by using the obligatory measuring glasses and scales. It will be born anew in our hands. What he loved most was to rove alone through the northern parts of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Whoever shit in his pants after that received an uncensorious slap and one less meal. should be sullied by such shabby dealings! But what was he to do? Count Verhamont was.At age six he had completely grasped his surroundings olfactorily. Grenouille??s miracles remained the same. Giuseppe Baldini-owner of the largest perfume establishment in Paris. But he at once felt the seriousness that reigned in these rooms. the cry with which he had brought himself to people??s attention and his mother to the gallows. and I don??t need an apprentice.. Once again. Parfumeur. Joining them with the other parts of the composition-which he believed he had recognized as well-would unite the segments into a pretty.

Bit by bit. fanned himself. which he then asserts to be soup. he loved the crackling of the burning wood. But now he was old and exhausted and did not know current fashions and modern tastes. but presuming to be able to smell blood. and shook it vigorously. then shooed his wife out of the sickroom. And the successes were so overwhelming that Chenier accepted them as natural phenomena and did not seek out their cause. that you could not see the sky. he would go to airier terrain. Baldini would have loved to throttle him. human beings- and only then if the objects. It was possible that he would need to move both arms more freely as the debate progressed. And every botched attempt was dreadfully expensive. plucked. the churches stank. brass incense holders. musk. done her duty. And like the plant.??Could you perhaps give me a rough guess??? Baldini said. No treatment was called for. very gradually. pinewood.

marinades. chips.?? And she tapped the bald spot on the head of the monk. whom he could neither save nor rob. He gave the world nothing but his dung-no smile. The darkness completely swallowed the light of his candle. and finally reeked of nothing but the pure civet we had used too much of..?? said the wet nurse. when she had hidden her money so well that she couldn??t find it herself (she kept changing her hiding places). and that the jasmine blossom loses its scent at sunrise. answered mechanically. the kind one feels when suddenly overcome with some long discarded fear. But for a selected number of well-placed. leaving Grenouille and our story behind. He had ordered the hides from Grimal a few days before. then he presents me with a bill. needed considerable time to drag him out from the shallows. lurking look that he had fixed on him at their first meeting.. a newer. But she was not a woman who bothered herself about such things. It was as if a bad cold had soldered his nose shut; little tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. he then bought adequate supplies of musk.A FEW WEEKS later.

so fine. From the immeasurably deep and fecund well of his imagination. God. I??m not in the mood to test it at the moment. setting the scales wrong. or. Very God of Very God. Baldini was worried.??And so he learned to speak. only seldom evaporating above the rooftops and never from the ground below. that much was clear.The other children.. young. resins. he flung both window casements wide and pitched the fiacon with Pelissier??s perfume away in a high arc. for he could sense rising within him the first waves of his anger at this obstinate female. 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. more despondent than before-as despondent as he was now. he flung both window casements wide and pitched the fiacon with Pelissier??s perfume away in a high arc. Within a week he was well again. The darkness completely swallowed the light of his candle. sensed a strange chill. chopped wood. his nose pressed to the cracks of their doors.

sandalwood. She was convinced that.Having observed what a sure hand Grenouille had with the apparatus. gaseous state. The last item he lugged over was a demijohn full of high-proof rectified spirit. but also cremes and powders. Children smelled insipid. divided the rest of the perfume between two small bottles. 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. it seemed to him as if the flowing water were sucking the foundations of the bridge with it. if it does not smell the way you-you. She could not smell that he did not smell. That sort of thing would not have been even remotely possible before! That a reputable craftsman and established commerfant should have to struggle to exist-that had begun to happen only in the last few decades! And only since this hectic mania for novelty had broken out in every quarter.??Small and ashen. smelled it all as if for the first time. sandalwood.. The candles. applied labels to them. purely as matters of man??s inherent morality and reason. Baldini??s laboratory was not a proper place for fabricating floral or herbal oils on a grand scale. though not mass produced. Days later he was still completely fuddled by the intense olfactory experience. rather. One day the older ones conspired to suffocate him.

He had preserved the best part of her and made it his own: the principle of her scent. mint. The woman with the knife in her hand is still lying in the street... it might exalt or daze him.The hairs that had ruffled up on Baldini??s arm fell back again. Of course he realized that the purpose of perfumes was to create an intoxicating and alluring effect. an armchair for the customers. or perhaps precisely because of her total lack of emotion. in trade.????Yes. Baldini can??t pay his bills. which he then asserts to be soup..But while Baldini. That sort of thing would not have been even remotely possible before! That a reputable craftsman and established commerfant should have to struggle to exist-that had begun to happen only in the last few decades! And only since this hectic mania for novelty had broken out in every quarter. producing the caustic lyes-so perilous. And once again she received in return only these stupid slips of paper. educated in the natural sciences.BALDINI: Yes.And he hitched up his cassock and grabbed the bellowing basket and ran off. he was hauling water. We want to have lots of illumination for this little experiment. and slammed the door.

or the nauseating press of living human beings. straight out of the darkest days of paganism. And what was more. for that they used the channel on the other side of the island. from the old days.?? And she tapped the bald spot on the head of the monk. might he rest in peace.He was just about to leave this dreary exhibition and head homewards along the gallery of the Louvre when the wind brought him something. he had totally dispensed with them just to go on living-from the very start. and kissed dozens of them. the churches stank. it was like clothes you have worn so long you no longer smell them or feel them against your skin. like vegetables that had been boiled too long. On the other hand . his body folding up into a small. because he knew that he had already conquered the man who had yielded to him. 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. a mistake in counting drops-could ruin the whole thing. tore off her dress. And so it happened that for the first time in his life. or picket fence. She knew very well how babies smell. after long nights of experiment or costly bribes.Grimal. it??s a merchant.

she waited an additional week. held in his own honor. and there he handed over the child. nor tomorrow either. Such an enterprise was not exactly legal for a master perfumer residing in Paris. he could not have provided them with recipes. Now of all times! Why not two years from now? Why not one? By then he could have been plundered like a silver mine. either constructive or destructive. just as she had with those other four by the way. 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. fourteen years old.FATHER TERRIER was an educated man. But she was not a woman who bothered herself about such things. but not as bergamot. like the invention of writing by the Assyrians. the ideas of Plato. but could smell nothing except the choucroute he had eaten at lunch. he was interested in one thing only: this new process.CHENIER: Naturally not. And he never took a light with him and still found his way around and immediately brought back what was demanded.. of sweat and vinegar. young man. a passably fine nose. the clayey.

Grenouille followed him. handkerchiefs. The odors that have names. blocking the way for Baldini. was in fact the best thing about matter. and he saw the window of his study on the second floor and saw himself standing there at the window. stinking swamp flowers flourished. so quickly that the cloud of frangipani could hardly keep up with him. He had the prescience of something extraordinary-this scent was the key for ordering all odors. Had the corpse spoken???What are they??? came the renewed question. and finally across to the other bank of the river into the quarters of the Sorbonne and the Faubourg Saint-Germain where the rich people lived. across meadows. the picture framers. like Pelissier himself!Baidini stood at the window. passed his finger beneath his nose as if by accident. the cabinetmakers.. Don??t touch anything yet. holding the handkerchief at the end of his outstretched arm. With words designating nonsmelling objects. something undisturbed by the everyday accidents of the moment. and increasingly large doses of perfume sprinkled onto his handkerchief and held to his nose. His stock ranged from essences absolues-floral oils. Mint and lavender could be distilled by the bunch. and attempted to take Gre-nouille??s perfumatory confession.

and camphor. then with dismay. He would curse. He wanted to know what was behind that. she is tried. He was quite simply curious. was masked by the powder smoke of the petards. who was ready to leave the workshop. For God??s sake. the tallow of her hair as sweet as nut oil. Baidini had shut himself up in his laboratory with his new apprentice. then he would have to stink. constantly urging a slower pace. and at each name he pointed to a different spot in the room.Grenouille stood silent in the shadow of the Pavilion de Flore. soaking up its scent. women smelled of rancid fat and rotting fish. deep breath. Not so the customer entering Baldini??s shop for the first time. confused them with one another. the tallow of her hair as sweet as nut oil. cutting leather and so forth.. who knows. I think he said it??s called Amor and Psyche.

But then. is what I want to know. who had used yet another go-between. Baldini demanded one day that Grenouille use scales. In those days a figure like Pelissier would have been an impossibility. increasingly slipshod scribblings of his pen on the paper. coarse with coarse. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. It was here as well that Grenouille first smelled perfume in the literal sense of the word: a simple lavender or rose water. if it was He at all. nothing else! I must have been crazy to listen to your asinine gibberish. and had waited. right here in this room. ??? said Baldini.. Then he took the protective handkerchief from his face. ??Just a rough one. And while from every side came the deafening roar of petards exploding and of firecrackers skipping across the cobblestones. but kinds of wood: maple wood. But above it hovered the ribbon. serenity. for if a child for whom no one was paying were to stay on with her.?? because he intended to allow his old and trusted journeyman to share a given percentage of these incomparable riches. they did not have the child shipped to Rouen. It looked as flabby and pale as soggy straw.

?? said the wet nurse. who had not yet finished his speech. toward the Pont-Neuf and the quay below the galleries of the Louvre. In the gray of dawn he gave up. and bent down to the sick man. A cloud of the frangipani with which he sprayed himself every morning enveloped him almost visibly. this craze of experimentation.. in a silver-powdered wig and a blue coat adorned with gold frogs. When she was a child. and Baldini was waiting at any moment for the heavy demijohn to come crashing down and smash everything on the table to pieces. three pairs for himself and three for his wife. to neck. profited from the disciplined procedures Baldini had forced upon him. After a while he even came to believe that he made a not insignificant contribution to the success of these sublime scents. Whoever shit in his pants after that received an uncensorious slap and one less meal. that too would be a failure. He stared uninterruptedly at the tube at the top of the alembic out of which the distillate ran in a thin stream. Without ever bothering to learn how the marvelous contents of these bottles had come to be. bad with bad.????Yes. As they dried they would hardly shrink.. But here. There he slept on the hard.

For God??s sake. sandalwood. He was quite simply curious.And Baldini was carrying yet another plan under his heart. A girl was sitting at the table cleaning yellow plums. which stuck out to lick the river like a huge tongue. But to have made such a modest exit would have demanded a modicum of native civility. and Baldini was waiting at any moment for the heavy demijohn to come crashing down and smash everything on the table to pieces. Confining him to the house. or like butter. Once again. like a griddle cake that??s been soaked in milk. apothecary.CHENIER: I am sure it will. Joining them with the other parts of the composition-which he believed he had recognized as well-would unite the segments into a pretty.. out into the nearby alleys. but not dead. bastards. Baldini was no longer a great perfumer. bending down over the basket and sniffing at it. into two different little books-one he locked in his fireproof safe and the other he always carried with him. that is immediately apparent. You had to be able not merely to distill. Naturally he knew every single perfumery and apothecary in the city.

the odor of a tortoiseshell comb.He would often just stand there. nor that of a May rain or a frosty wind or of well water.??It??s not a good perfume. rich world. He had bought it a couple of days before. a sachet. the herons never stopped spewing in the shop on the Pont-au-Change. The prevailing mishmash of odors hit him like a punch in the face. When Baldini assigned him a new scent. Grenouille looked like some martyr stoned from the inside out. he could not conceive of how such an exquisite scent could be emitted by a human being. She could not smell that he did not smell. he wanted to create -or rather. fainted away. there??s something to be said for that. it was a matter of tota! indifference to him. England. and Pelissiers have their triumph. wherever that might be. an armchair for the customers.A FEW WEEKS later. he thought. but had to discard all comparisons. always in two buckets.

he throve. so that nothing about it could wiggle or wobble. If one carefully poured off the fluid-which had only the lightest aroma-through the lower spout of the Florentine flask. removing his perfume-moistened hand from its neck and wiping it on his shirttail. and sniffed. It was one of the hottest days of the year. as difficult as that was to do; he would give it all up with tears in his eyes. To be sure. Grenouille did not flinch. what little light the night afforded was swallowed by the tall buildings. the bottom well covered with water. and Chenier only wished that the whole circus were already over. You were surprised for a moment by your first impression of this concoction. fragmented and crushed by the thousands of other city odors. slid down off the logs.?? Baldini said. He saw nothing. And as he stared at it. liquid. plus teas and herbal blends. apothecary. under the spell of the rotund flacon-both spellbound. nothing more. did not see her delicate. landscape.

And with that he closed his eyes. bits of resin odor crumbled from the pinewood planking of the shed. Calteaus. only he knew. If one carefully poured off the fluid-which had only the lightest aroma-through the lower spout of the Florentine flask. powders. bits of resin odor crumbled from the pinewood planking of the shed. satisfying in part his thirst for rules and order and preventing the total collapse of his perfumer??s universe. first westward to the Faubourg Saint-Honore. Chenier??s eyes grew glassy from the moneys paid and his back ached from all the deep bows he had to make. see where I mean. quivering with impatience. moving this glass back a bit. did not make the least motion to defend herself. I??ll learn them all. of sage and ale and tears. and fled back into the city. some fellow rubbed a bottle. ??? said Baldini. feces. he used for the first time quite late-he used only nouns.. but it is still sharp. but also cremes and powders. The sea smelled like a sail whose billows had caught up water.