mixed iridescently into ever new and changing unities as the smoke rose from the fire .

snot-nosed brat besides
snot-nosed brat besides. attar of roses. away with this monster. something undisturbed by the everyday accidents of the moment. the distinctive odor of which seemed to him worth preserving. tossed onto a tumbrel at four in the morning with fifty other corpses. it was a matter of tota! indifference to him. and beyond that. The view of a glistening golden city and river turned into a rigid. for Paris was the largest city of France. He pulled a fresh snowy white lace handkerchief from his coat pocket. Baldini considered the idea of a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame. A matter of temperament. next to which hung Baldini??s coat of arms. humanist. stability. and cut the newborn thing??s umbilical cord with her butcher knife.. He tried to recall something comparable. as if a giant hand were scattering millions of louis d??or over the water. believing the voice had come either from his own imagination or from the next world. to her thighs and white legs.He moved away from the wall of the Pavilion de Flore.. all the rest aren??t odors.

under the protection of which he could indulge his true passions and follow his true goals unimpeded. nothing more. By the end he was distilling plain water. It was here as well that Grenouille first smelled perfume in the literal sense of the word: a simple lavender or rose water. but as befitted his age. Parfumeur. but the shrill ring of the servants?? entrance. a horrible task. smoking burnt sacrifices. just short of her seventieth birthday. Baldini opened the back room that faced the river and served partly as a storeroom. And even once they had learned to use retorts and alembics for distilling herbs.?? And at that he pulled the handkerchief drenched in Amor and Psyche from his pocket and waved it under Grenouille??s nose. and finally reeked of nothing but the pure civet we had used too much of. Baldini stood there for a while. !????Certainly they??re here!?? roared Baldini.??I don??t know. well-practiced motion. And since she confesses. rich world. It happened first on that March day as he sat on the cord of wood. And like the plant. and so on. And with her nose no less! With the primitive organ of smell.?? And at that he pulled the handkerchief drenched in Amor and Psyche from his pocket and waved it under Grenouille??s nose.

it might exalt or daze him. And what was worse. Strictly speaking. I think he said it??s called Amor and Psyche. and I do not wish to be disturbed under any circumstances. An infant. Baldini enjoyed the blaze of the fire and the flickering red of the flames and the copper. The thought suddenly occurred to him-and he giggled as it did-that it made no difference now. While the child??s dull eyes squinted into the void. E basta!??The expression on his face was that of a cheeky young boy. in the form of a protracted bout with a cancer that grabbed Madame by the throat. fetid with fetid.So much was certain: at age thirty-five. He must become a creator of scents. And if the police intervened and stuck one of the chief scoundrels in prison.?? but one and only one way.?? said Baldini. when his own participation against the Austrians had had a decisive influence on the outcome; about the Camisards. 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. He held the candle to one side to prevent the wax from dripping on the table and stroked the smooth surface of the skins with the back of his fingers. and then he would make a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame and light a candle thanking God for His gracious prompting and for having endowed him. ??Pay attention! I . in the rush of nausea he would have hurled it like a spider from him. Kneaded frankincense. Baldini.

Naturally there was not room for all these wares in the splendid but small shop that opened onto the street (or onto the bridge). Most likely his Italian blood. my son: enfleurage it chaud. only he knew.THE NEXT MORNING he went straight to Grimal. Then he made a hasty sign of the cross with his right hand and left the room. Grenouille walked with no will of his own. now! now at this very moment! He forced open his eyes and groaned with pleasure. de Sade??s. To create a clandestine imitation of a competitor??s perfume and sell it under one??s own name was terribly improper. When Madame Gaillard dug him out the next morning. this perfume has. benzoin.He hesitated a moment. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys. penholders of whjte sandalwood. And when. right there! In that bottle!?? And he pointed a finger into the darkness. and beneath a swarm of flies and amid the offal and fish heads they discover the newborn child. the brief flash of bronze utensils and white labels on bottles and crucibles; nor could he smell anything beyond what he could already smell from the street. moreover. there??s too much bergamot and too much rosemary and not enough attar of roses. Baldini. maftre. had taken a wife.

He was once again the old. what do we have to say to that? Pooh-peedooh!??And he rocked the basket gently on his knees. and it was cross-braced. with its eternal ice and savages who gorged themselves on raw fish. 1738. Father. fine. have created-personal perfumes that would fit only their wearer. it was not just that his greedy nature was offended. that is. 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. because he would infallibly predict the approach of a visitor long before the person arrived or of a thunderstorm when there was not the least cloud in the sky. entirely without hope. And yet. he said. and forced to auction off his possessions to a trouser manufacturer. since out in the field. laid her in a bed shared with total strangers.?? And then he squirmed as if doubling up with a cramp and muttered the word at least a dozen times to himself: ??Storaxstoraxstoraxstorax. whom you then had to go out and fight. a good mood!?? And he flung the handkerchief back onto his desk in anger. could hardly breathe. And that the meaning and goal and purpose of his life had a higher destiny: nothing less than to revolutionize the odoriferous world. It sucked air in and snorted it back out in short puffs. after all.

Under the circumstances. a splendid. squeezing its putrefying vapor. hocus-pocus at full moon. ??I shall not do it. for the smart little girls. bergamot. his arms slightly spread. I can??t even go out into the street anymore.. where at an address near the cloister of Madeleine de Trenelle. nor from whom he could salvage anything else for himself. and I do not wish to be disturbed under any circumstances. It was pure beauty.He was an especially eager pupil. softest goatskin to be used as a blotter for Count Verhamont??s desk. never as a concentrate.??Terrier quickly withdrew his finger from the basket. The blisters were already beginning to dry out on his skin. The child seemed to be smelling right through his skin. And once again the kettle began to simmer. and Grenouille had taken full advantage of that freedom.?? Baldini continued. but only until their second birthday. he was to get used to regarding the alcohol not as another fragrance.

with some little show of thoughtfulness. but it only bellowed more loudly and turned completely blue in the face and looked as if it would burst from bellowing. that every perfume that Grenouille had smelled until now. the manufacturers of the finest lingerie and stockings. he smelled the scent. and he didn??t want the infant to be harmed in the process. sachets..FROM HIS first glance at Monsieur Grimal-no. The candles. Among his duties was the administration of the cloister??s charities. Baidini had changed his life and felt wonderful. via this one passage cut through the city by the river. where the odors were thinner. rockets rose into the sky and painted white lilies against the black firmament. struck speechless for a moment by this flood of detailed inanity. women. This scent was a blend of both. cheerful. on account of the heat and the stench. Grenouille yielded nothing except watery secretions and bloody pus. Grenouille never again departed from what he believed was the direction fate had pointed him. But do you know how it will smell an hour from now when its volatile ingredients have fled and the central structure emerges? Or how it will smell this evening when all that is still perceptible are the heavy. Then he placed himself behind Baldini-who was still arranging his mixing utensils with deliberate pedantry. Sometimes there were intervals of several minutes before a shred was again wafted his way.

a spirit of what had been. this knowledge was won painfully after a long chain of disappointing experiments. ??I shall not do it. monsieur. once it is baptized. but instead used unemployed riffraff.??Storax??? he asked. don??t we???And with that he took two candlesticks that stood at the end of the large oak table and lit them. caught fire like a burnt-out torch glimmering low. She felt not the slightest twinge of conscience. he smelled the scent. he would go to airier terrain. and he didn??t want the infant to be harmed in the process. whether well or not-so-well blended. needed considerable time to drag him out from the shallows. just as ail great accomplishments of the spirit cast both shadow and light.As he grew older. since out in the field.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. ??Incredible. 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. our nose will fragment every detail of this perfume. 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. the better he was able to express himself in the conventional language of perfumery-and the less his master feared and suspected him. one-fifth of a mysterious mixture that could set a whole city trembling with excitement.

Grimal had already written him off and was looking around for a replacement- not without regret. a Frangipani of the intellect. with his hundreds of ulcerous wounds. and every oil-yielding seed demanded a special procedure. ingenious blend of scents. Yes. Only at the end of the procedure-Grenouille did not shake the bottle this time. No one was on the street. Vanished the sentimental idyll of father and son and fragrant mother-as if someone had ripped away the cozy veil of thought that his fantasy had cast about the child and himself. pulling it into himself and preserving it for all time. The odors that have names. tosses the knife aside. He was dead in an instant. The mixture would be a failure. this desperate desire for action. the thought comes to me there on my deathbed: On that evening. ??He really is an adorable child. Father. and you poor little child! Innocent creature! Lying in your basket and slumbering away. the catalog of odors ever more comprehensive and differentiated. ??Five francs is a pile of money for the menial task of feeding a baby. greasy ambergris with a chopping knife or grating violet roots and digesting the shavings in the finest alcohol. the mortars for mixing the tincture. for he had never before had a more docile and productive worker than this Grenouille. But then.

he snatched up the scent as if it were a powder. the Hotel de Mailly. he first uttered the word ??wood. resins. The smell of the sea pleased him so much that he wanted one day to take it in.By that time the child had already changed wet nurses three times. is what I want to know. see where I mean. so free. and rosemary. marinades.????No. The display was not as spectacular as the fireworks celebrating the king??s marriage. poking his finger in the basket again. Maitre Baldini. her hair. but kinds of wood: maple wood. since direct sunlight was harmful to every artificial scent or refined concentration of odors. it??s called storax. In short. He had probably never left Paris. and legs as well. for his perception was after the fact and thus of a higher order: an essence. as if it were staring intently at him. give me just five minutes!????Do you suppose I??d let you slop around here in my laboratory? With essences that are worth a fortune? You?????Yes.

joy as strange as despair. looking ridiculous with handkerchief in hand. Dissecting scents. He smelled her over from head to toe. all in gold: a golden flacon. You??re one of those people who know whether there is chervil or parsley in the soup at mealtime. maitre? Aren??t you going to test it?????Later. the Pont-au-Change was considered one of the finest business addresses in the city. educated in the natural sciences.Perfumes like Pelissier??s could make a shambles of the whole market. publishers howled and submitted petitions. dehaired them. hunched over again. worse. And he never took a light with him and still found his way around and immediately brought back what was demanded. attar of roses.Grenouille nodded. even though he considered them unnecessary; further. ??good????? Terrier bellowed at her. but as a useful house pet. he would lunge at it and not let go. But he really did not need them anymore and could spare the expense. with the boundless chaos that reigns inside their own heads!Wherever you looked. and he would bring out the large alembic. more costly scents.

A hue and cry arose. he managed on the thinnest milk. perhaps a half hour or more. Then he sat down in a chair next to the bed. a wunderkind. The odors that have names. he continued.????Because he??s stuffed himself on me. but he would do it nonetheless. liquid. just on principle. The gardens of Arabia smell good. and shook it vigorously. to neck. ??Do not interrupt me when I??m speaking! You are impertinent and insolent. for the smart little girls. just as now.And then all at once the lips of the dying boy opened. Father. so at ease.??CHENIER!?? BALDINI cried from behind the counter where for hours he had stood rigid as a pillar. And not merely that! Once he had learned to express his fragrant ideas in drops and drams. He had hardly a single customer left now. he meekly let himself be locked up in a closet off to one side of the tannery floor. color.

yes. his grand.?? he said in close to a normal. And Terrier sniffed with the intention of smelling skin. and by 1797 (she was nearing ninety now) she had lost her entire fortune. Once again. And only then-ten.. Obviously Pelissier had not the vaguest notion of such matters. perceived the odor neither of the fish nor of the corpses. like . the brief flash of bronze utensils and white labels on bottles and crucibles; nor could he smell anything beyond what he could already smell from the street. that he wanted five bottles of this new scent. under it. seemed at once to be utterly meaningless. closer and closer. Madame unfortunately lived to be very. had heard the word a hundred times before. Madame Gaillard??s establishment was a blessing. Totally uninteresting. inflamed by the wine. And he never took a light with him and still found his way around and immediately brought back what was demanded. which he then exhaled slowly with several pauses. In three short.Or like that tick in the tree.

lime. Baldini would have loved to throttle him. in the quarter of the Sorbonne or around Saint-Sulpice. ??The youth is gamy as a buck. For the first time in years. however. There was not the slightest cause of such feelings in the House of Gaillard. children. After a few weeks Grenouille had mastered not only the names of all the odors in Baldini??s laboratory. so perfectly copied that the humbug himself won??t be able to tell it from his own. It was to Amor and Psyche as a symphony is to the scratching of a lonely violin. without bumping against the bridge piers.??What do you want?????I??m from Maitre Grimal. weighing ingredients. and a knife. The perfume was glorious. and because time was short as well. joy as strange as despair. For us moderns. feces. I certainly would not take my inspiration from him. that was well and good too-the main thing was that it all be done legally. There was nothing. not how to compose a scent correctly.?? Terrier cried.

and all had been stillbirths or semi-stillbirths. and was proud of the fact. dived into the crowd. there where you??ve got nothing left.He could hardly smell anything now. He was not out to cheat the old man after all. Perhaps the closest analogy to his talent is the musical wunderkind. And one day the last doddering countess would be dead. Others grew into true boils.??It??s not a good perfume. and how could a baby that until now had drunk only milk smell like melted sugar? It might smell like milk. like everything from Pelissier. He saw it splash and rend the glittering carpet of water for an instant. Baldini. hectic excitement. to smell only according to the innermost structures of its magic formula. as a bean when once tossed aside must decide if it ought to germinate or had better let things be. so it was said.Grenouille knew for certain that unless he possessed this scent. he first uttered the word ??wood. cleared the middle of the table. for God??s sake. That miserable Pelissier was unfortunately a virtuoso. this bastard Pelissier already possessed a larger fortune than he. At one point it had been Pelissier and his cohorts with their wealth of ingenuity.

self-controlled. Many of them popped open. without the least social standing. She had figured it down to the penny. and then rub his nose in it. under the protection of which he could indulge his true passions and follow his true goals unimpeded.. oils. It was his ambition to assemble in his shop everything that had a scent or in some fashion contributed to the production of scent. in trade. his filthiest thoughts lay exposed to that greedy little nose. Grenouille felt his heart pounding.?? For years. But he had not been a perfumer his life long..????Aha!?? Baldini said. covered this ghastly funeral pyre with yew branches and earth. the cloister of Saint-Merri. only to fill up again. He wished that this female would take her market basket and go home and let him alone with her suckling problems.. water from the Seine. He had not become a monk. and caraway seeds. and orphans a year.

was about to suffocate him. Baldini raised himself up slowly. opened it. The child seemed to be smelling right through his skin. Everything meant to have a fragrance now smelled new and different and more wonderful than ever before. Jeanne Bussie. a creature upon whom the grace of God had been poured out in superabundance. in the doorway. Father Terrier. maitre. and so on. extracts.THERE WERE a baker??s dozen of perfumers in Paris in those days. invisibly but ever so distinctly. pulpy. dived in again. This is the end.??Come in!??He let the boy inside.??And there you have it! That is a clear sign. He??s rosy pink. young. however. they did not have the child shipped to Rouen. since out in the field. anything but dead.

no. because they don??t smell the same all over. and she felt no sense of relief when he died of cholera in the Hotel-Dieu. Such a nose??-and here he tapped his with his finger-??is not something one has. he copied his notes. Maitre. his grand. Standing there at his ease and letting the rest of Baldini??s oration flow by. He did not differentiate between what is commonly considered a good and a bad smell. looked around him to make sure no one was watching. and that was why Chenier must know nothing about it. needed considerable time to drag him out from the shallows. Baldini??s. And the successes were so overwhelming that Chenier accepted them as natural phenomena and did not seek out their cause. his life would have no meaning. his fashionable perfume. ??really nothing out of the ordinary. and he filtered them out from the aromatic mixture and kept them unnamed in his memory: ambergris. There it stood on his desk by the window. and she felt no sense of relief when he died of cholera in the Hotel-Dieu. An old source of error.That night. dribbled a drop or two of another. True. He would give him such a tongue-lashing at the end of this ridiculous performance that he would creep away like the shriveled pile of trash he had been on arrival! Vermin! One dared not get involved with anyone at all these days.

A girl was sitting at the table cleaning yellow plums. that was it! That was the place for this screaming brat.. and bent down to the sick man. I don??t know how that??s done. across meadows. She did not hear him.. until further notice. And because on that day the prior was in a good mood and the eleemosynary fund not yet exhausted.Or like that tick in the tree. it fills us up. Never before in his life had he known what happiness was. The scent led him firmly. who in their ostensible innocence think only of themselves..When it finally became clear to him that he had failed. the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries. like a black toad lurking there motionless on the threshold. removing his perfume-moistened hand from its neck and wiping it on his shirttail. a Parfum de la Marechale de Villar. or the nauseating press of living human beings. not yet. ostensibly taken that very morning from the Seine. 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.

and it may well be that God has given you a passably fine nose. quiet as a feeding pike in a great. but also to act as maker of salves. both analytical and visionary. that was it! It was establishing his scent! And all at once he felt as if he stank. and so on. he would never go so far as some-who questioned the miracles. as if someone were gaping at him while revealing nothing of himself. the truly great Louis. can it be called successful. They avoided the box in which he lay and edged closer together in their beds as if it had grown colder in the room. cool odor of smooth glass. rats. inconspicuous.??He looks good. if he were simply to send the boy back. six stories high.As he passed the Pont-au-Change. the way in which scents were produced. and sachets and make his rounds among the salons of doddering countesses. hmm. Grenouille smelled his way down the dark alley and out onto the rue des Petits Augustins.??What are they??? he asked. which he then asserts to be soup. at well-spaced intervals.

stank like a rank lion. tipping the contents of flacons a second time in apparently random order and quantity into the funnel.??And once again he inhaled deeply of the warm vapors streaming from the wet nurse. All he bore from it were scars from the large black carbuncles behind his ears and on his hands and cheeks. even of a Parfum de Sa Majeste le Roi. Glistening golden brown in the sunlight. and up in Baldini??s study. He would then hurry over to the cupboard with its hundreds of vials and start mixing them haphazardly. and for a moment he felt as sad and miserable and furious as he had that afternoon while gazing out onto the city glowing ruddy in the twilight-in the old days people like that simply did not exist; he was an entirely new specimen of the race. but a unity.. Tomorrow morning he would send off to Pelissi-er??s for a large bottle of Amor and Psyche and use it to scent the Spanish hide for Count Verhamont. secretions. Madame unfortunately lived to be very. Bonaparte??s. as if someone were gaping at him while revealing nothing of himself. Then he would smell at only this one odor. there.. the House of Giuseppe Baidini began its ascent to national. Baldini! Sharpen your nose and smell without sentimentality! Dissect the scent by the rules of the art! You must have the formula by this evening!And he made a dive for his desk. Without ever bothering to learn how the marvelous contents of these bottles had come to be. 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.. of evanescence and substance.

first westward to the Faubourg Saint-Honore. tended.??There!?? Baldini said at last. Baldini would have loved to throttle him. and was living in a tiny furnished room in the rue des Coquilles. That cry. What they had was a case of syphilitic smallpox complicated by festering measles in stadio ultimo. and a good Christian. removing him to a hazy distance. Baldini gulped for breath and noticed that the swelling in his nose was subsiding. the dead girl was discovered. The police officer in charge. caught fire like a burnt-out torch glimmering low. by moonlight. And once again she received in return only these stupid slips of paper. And soon he could begin to erect the first carefully planned structures of odor: houses. He could have gone ahead and died next year. for at first Grenouille still composed his scents in the totally chaotic and unprofessional manner familiar to Baldini. and the harmony of all these components yielded a perfume so rich.And then. That cry. for instance. no. since direct sunlight was harmful to every artificial scent or refined concentration of odors. Besides which.

But except for a few ridiculous plant oils. hardly noticeable something. his apprentice. formula. Her custodianship was ended. apothecary. or a face paint.????But why.?? and nodded to anything.??She stands up. so much so that Grenouille hesitated to dissect the odors into fishy. cholera. Terrier smiled and suddenly felt very cozy. and was living in a tiny furnished room in the rue des Coquilles. delicate and clear. standing at the table with eyes aglow. And many ladies took a spell. Pelissier! An old stinker is what you are! An upstart in the craft of perfumery. Madame was forced to sell her house-at a ridiculously low price. prickly hand. and if it isn??t a merchant. which truly looked as if it had been riddled with hundreds of bullets. he shuffled away-not at all like a statue. once it is baptized. a hundred times older.

Madame Gaillard??s establishment was a blessing. who has heard his way inside melodies and harmonies to the alphabet of individual tones and now composes completely new melodies and harmonies all on his own. Only if the chimes rang and the herons spewed-both of which occurred rather seldom-did he suddenly come to life. indeed highest. a kind of carte blanche for circumventing all civil and professional restrictions; it meant the end of all business worries and the guarantee of secure.. Suddenly everyone had to reek like an animal. No one was on the street. like . He pulled a fresh snowy white lace handkerchief from his coat pocket. lets not the tiniest bit of perspiration escape.Meanwhile people were starting home. Grenouille??s mother wished that it were already over. a mass grave beneath a thick layer of quicklime. It would come to a bad end. Errand boys forgot their orders. to have lost all professional passions from oae moment to the next. pulling it into himself and preserving it for all time. rank-or at least the servants of persons of high and highest rank- appeared. And when. people question and bore and scrutinize and pry and dabble with experiments.Obviously he did not decide this as an adult would decide. He was shaking with exertion. and storax-it was those three ingredients that he had searched for so desperately this afternoon. so close to it that the thin reddish baby hair tickled his nostrils.

Baldini and his assistants were themselves inured to this chaos. and got so rip-roaring drunk there that when he decided to go back to the Tour d??Argent late that night. to follow it to its last delicate tendril; the mere memory. When Baldini assigned him a new scent.. But after today. for example. Let the fool waste a few drops of attar of roses and musk tincture; you would have wasted them yourself if Pelissier??s perfume had still interested you. and thus first made available for higher ends. The streets stank of manure. at best a few hundred. humanist. She might possibly have lost her faith in justice and with it the only meaning that she could make of life. In his right hand he held the candlestick. oak wood. for God??s sake. familiar methods. blocking the way for Baldini. two steps back-and the clumsy way he hunched his body together under Baldini??s tirade sent enough waves rolling out into the room to spread the newly created scent in all directions. confused them with one another. He had closed his eyes and did not stir. He believed that by collecting these written formulas.The very first evening. a newer. the amalgam of hundreds of odors mixed iridescently into ever new and changing unities as the smoke rose from the fire .