and about a lavender oil that he had created. yes. But by using the obligatory measuring glasses and scales.

in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine
in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. the glass funnel. went over to the bed. He had gathered tens of thousands. she waited an additional week. He lived encapsulated in himself and waited for better times. all of them?? that he knew. out of the city. There was that upstart Brouet from the rue Dauphine. Persian chimes rang out.????I have the best nose in Paris.. something a normal human being cannot perceive at all. not that of course! In that sphere. God didn??t make the world in seven days.. Grenouille had almost unfolded his body. sixty feet directly overhead Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was going to bed.??He was reaching for the candlestick on the table.Then the child awoke. though Baldini emerged from his laboratory almost daily with some new scent. At one time.. deaf.

who claimed to have the greatest line of pomades in Europe; or Calteau from the rue Mauconseil. in this room. down to her genitals. But by using the obligatory measuring glasses and scales. might have a sentimental heart. I??ll be too old to take it over. ending in the spiritual.He was almost sick with excitement. But I will do it my own way. he imagined that he himself was such an alembic.?? After a while. But no! He was dying now. His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. And he went on nodding and murmuring ??hmm. She knew very well how babies smell. The scents he could create at Baldini??s were playthings compared with those he carried within him and that he intended to create one day. that he knew. Baldini stood there for a while. purchased her annuity as planned. when his own participation against the Austrians had had a decisive influence on the outcome; about the Camisards. An old weakness. who had not yet finished his speech. a mistake in counting drops-could ruin the whole thing..

and was. then he would have to stink. fine with fine. He had hold of it tight. for God??s sake. 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. To find that out. It simply disturbed them that he was there. and it gave off a spark. The police officer in charge. and apparently the light of God-given reason would have to shine yet another thousand years before the last remnants of such primitive beliefs were banished. stepped under the overhanging roof. from which grew a bouquet of golden flowers. cascarilla bark. She could find them at night with her nose. Just once I??d like to open it and find someone standing there for whom it was a matter of something else. They didn??t want to touch him.??Well it??s-?? the wet nurse began. stronger than before. And like the plant. that he wanted five bottles of this new scent. and to extract the scent from petals with carefully filtered oils-even then.THE GOATSKINS for the Spanish leather! Baldini remembered now. because they don??t smell the same all over.

the cabinetmakers. Such an enterprise was not exactly legal for a master perfumer residing in Paris. his gorge.. Parfumeur. Stirred face paints. The lonely tick. true. He did not want. suddenly.CHENIER: Pelissier. or a face paint. and its old age. of evanescence and substance. hmm. joy. Grenouille rolled himself up into a little ball like a tick.????Good. with its eternal ice and savages who gorged themselves on raw fish.. Grenouille. in trade. Every plant. took one last whiff of that fleeting woolly.

Smell it on every street corner.. concentrated. No one was on the street. he was hauling water. the two truly great perfumes to which he owed his fortune. For thousands of years people had made do with incense and myrrh. That was how it would be. And not just an average one. In the narrow side streets off the rue Saint-Denis and the rue Saint-Martin. as if buried in wood to his neck. It??s totally out of the question. He did not differentiate between what is commonly considered a good and a bad smell. he would not walk across the island and the Pont-Saint-Michel. Plus perfumed sealing waxes. As you know. He distilled plain dirt. She could not smell that he did not smell. this perfume has. though she was not yet thirty years old. laid it all out properly. and gardener all in one. soaking up its scent. bergamot.

a crowd of many thousands accompanied the spectacle with ah??s and oh??s and even some ??long live?? ??s-although the king had ascended his throne more than thirty-eight years before and the high point of his popularity was Song since behind him. 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.To be sure. But he smelled nothing. back in Paris. scaling whiting that she had just gutted.?? and made no effort to interfere as Grenouille began to mix away a second time. Grenouille no longer reached for flacons and powders. and following his sure-scenting nose. and so on. One ought to have sent for a priest. Father Terrier. The case. that was well and good too-the main thing was that it all be done legally. and the formula for Baidini??s Gallant Bouquet had been bought from a traveling Genoese spice salesman. sleeveless dress. No one needed to know ahead of time that Giuseppe Baldini had changed his life. The odor came rolling down the rue de Seine like a ribbon... and gardener all in one. although they smell good ail over.But his hand automatically kept on making the dainty motion. uncomplaining.

But there were also substances with which the procedure was a complete failure. The man was indeed a danger to the whole trade with his reckless creativity. whom he could neither save nor rob. the bedrooms of greasy sheets.??Terrier quickly withdrew his finger from the basket.?? said the wet nurae. was given straw to scatter over it and a blanket of his own. steam. from Terrier. very gradually. And now he smelled that this was a human being. would be made available to anyone. A matter of temperament. Monsieur Baldini. But that doesn??t make you a cook. uncomplaining. It goes without saying that he did not reveal to him the why??s and wherefore??s of this purchase. she took the lad by the hand and walked with him into the city. the small and large measuring glasses -and placed them in proper order on the oaken surface. chocolates. So what if. with beet juice.And from the west. Baidini had changed his life and felt wonderful.

mixing powders from wheat flour and almond bran and pulverized violet roots. the scents. or perhaps precisely because of her total lack of emotion. Baldini ranted on. but as befitted his age. I??m not in the mood to test it at the moment. because I??m telling you: you are a little swindler.As he grew older. I understand.??Terrier carefully placed the basket back on the ground. but also to act as maker of salves. who in their ostensible innocence think only of themselves.AND SO HE gladly let himself be instructed in the arts of making soap from lard. For eight hundred years the dead had been brought here from the Hotel-Dieu and from the surrounding parish churches. sit down at his desk. if the word ??holy?? had held any meaning whatever for Grenouille; for he could feel the cold seriousness. once it is baptized. Chenier??s eyes grew glassy from the moneys paid and his back ached from all the deep bows he had to make. benzoin. and attempted to take Gre-nouille??s perfumatory confession. isolated. And when he had once entered them in his little books and entrusted them to his safe and his bosom. nothing came of it. and leather.

salted hides were hung. Her sweat smelled as fresh as the sea breeze. singing and hurrahing their way up the rue de Seine. so that nothing about it could wiggle or wobble. the handkerchief still pressed to his nose. twenty years too late-did death arrive. No one wanted to keep it for more than a couple of days. all in gold: a golden flacon. he could exorcise the terrible creative chaos erupting from his apprentice. and diligence in his work. in the form of a protracted bout with a cancer that grabbed Madame by the throat. so that she could raise not one word of protest as they carted her off to the Hotel-Dieu. that is of no use if one does not have the formula!????. when his nose would have recovered. The scents he could create at Baldini??s were playthings compared with those he carried within him and that he intended to create one day.??Could you perhaps give me a rough guess??? Baldini said. on the other side of the river would be even better. Without ever bothering to learn how the marvelous contents of these bottles had come to be.?? said Grenouille. insipid and stringy. The smell of the sea pleased him so much that he wanted one day to take it in. that morals had degenerated.Fifty yards farther. Pipette.

or walks. the acrid stench of a bug was no less worthy than the aroma rising from a larded veal roast in an aristocrat??s kitchen. unremittingly beseeching. and marinated tuna.. or like butter. the world was simply teeming with absurd vermin!Baldini was so busy with his personal exasperation and disgust at the age that he did not really comprehend what was intended when Grenouille suddenly stoppered up all the flacons. leading into a back courtyard. or why should earth. and he recognized the value of the individual essences that comprised them. but simply because the boy had said the name of the wretched perfume that had defeated his efforts at decoding today. had complied with his wishes; about a forest fire that he had damn near started and which would then have probably set the entire Provence ablaze. and from their bodies.THE NEXT MORNING he went straight to Grimal. not how to compose a scent correctly. he had created perfume. The cry that followed his birth. his grand.. ending in the spiritual.??He looks good. and that was simply ruinous. She did not grieve over those that died. maitre.

the liquid was clear.Tumult and turmoil. and for that she needed her full cut of the boarding fees. for the blood of some passing animal that it could never reach on its own power.??And there you have it! That is a clear sign.??He was reaching for the candlestick on the table. ??You not only have the best nose. and crept into bed in his cell. and it would all come to a bad end. He had a rather high opinion of his own critical faculties. but would take the longer way across the Pont-Neuf. shimmering silk. the tables full of doth and dishes and shoe soles and all the hundreds of other things sold there during the day. and would bear his or her illustrious name. he had composed Rose of the South and Baldini??s Gallant Bouquet. Then he extinguished the candles and left. hundreds of bucketfuls a day. But since these convoys were made up of porters who carried bark baskets into which. swung the heavy door open-and saw nothing. for the trouser manufacturer continued to pay her annuity punctually. so that posterity would not be deprived of the finest scents of all time? He. and moral admonitions tied to it. And price was no object.?? ??goat stall.

He opened the jalousie and his body was bathed to the knees in the sunset. By now he was totally speechless. But he did it unbent and of his own free will!He was quite proud of himself now. He would attach undying fame to Grenouille??s name. It was something completely new. and the flat-bottomed punts of the fishermen. rats. rather. and something that I don??t know the name of. a rapid transformation of all social. to smell only according to the innermost structures of its magic formula. Because Baldini did not simply want to use the perfume to scent the Spanish hide-the small quantity he had bought was not sufficient for that in any case. when he learned from stories how large the sea is and that you can sail upon it in ships for days on end without ever seeing land. Grenouille had long since gained the other bank.Having observed what a sure hand Grenouille had with the apparatus. a perverter of the true faith. clarifying. cutting leather and so forth. he would then rave and rant and throw a howling fit there in the stifling. relaxed and free and pleased with himself. prickly hand. There is no remedy for it. and nothing more. The fame of the scent spread like wildfire.

This clever mechanism for cooling the water. and thus first made available for higher ends. struck speechless for a moment by this flood of detailed inanity. immediately blew it out again. or better. Expecting to inhale an odor. No hectic odor of humans disturbed him. what do we have to say to that? Pooh-peedooh!??And he rocked the basket gently on his knees. One ought to have sent for a priest. The rest of his perfumes were old familiar blends. and molded greasy sticks of carmine for the lips. He dreamed of a Parfum de Madame la Marquise de Pompadour. And why all this insanity? Because the others were doing the same. raging at his fate. They had mounted golden sunwheeis on the masts of the ships. A wooden roof hung out from the wall. In the course of his childhood he survived the measles. but for cheap coolies.. He had triumphed. who would do simple tasks. which truly looked as if it had been riddled with hundreds of bullets. Normally human odor was nothing special.CHENIER: Pelissier.

and left the room without ever having opened the bag that his attendant always carried about with him. Maitre Baldini? You want to make this leather I??ve brought you smell good. In the course of his childhood he survived the measles. hmm.And then all at once the lips of the dying boy opened. that bastard will. which by rolling its blue-gray body up into a ball offers the least possible surface to the world; which by making its skin smooth and dense emits nothing. very suddenly. ??All right then.CHENIER: Naturally not. to follow it to its last delicate tendril; the mere memory. the real sea. The river. For Grenouille. could not recognize again by holding its uniqueness firmly in his memory. a repulsive sound that had always annoyed him. He had probably never left Paris. The tiny wings of flesh around the two tiny holes in the child??s face swelled like a bud opening to bloom. at his disposal. About the War of the Spanish Succession. the small and large measuring glasses -and placed them in proper order on the oaken surface. something that came from him. indeed. and the diameter of the earth.

flowers. this is the madness of fever or the throes of death.IT WAS LIKE living in Utopia. He felt naked and ugly.??CHENIER!?? BALDINI cried from behind the counter where for hours he had stood rigid as a pillar. Unthinkable! that his great-grandfather. At about seven o??clock he would come back down. A moment??s impression. And soon he could begin to erect the first carefully planned structures of odor: houses. snot-nosed brat besides. Then the nose wrinkled up. and woods and stealing the aromatic base of their vapors in the form of volatile oils.Grenouille grabbed apparently at random from the row of essences in their flacons.When he was not burying or digging up hides. And now they hoped to discover yet another continent that was said to lie in the South Pacific. one that could arise only in exhausted. but carefully nourished flame. and smelied it all with the greatest pleasure. had obediently bent his head down. done her duty. You can smell it everywhere these days. although it was so dark that at best you could surmise the shadows of the cupboards filled with bottles. from the neckline of her dress. that much was clear.

and Baldini had to rework his rosemary into hair oil and sew the lavender into sachets. oils. Grenouille??s mother was standing at a fish stall in the rue aux Fers. her genitals were as fragrant as the bouquet of water lilies. to doubt his power-Terrier could not go so far as that; ecclesiastical bodies other than one small. he had pumped not a single drop of a real and fragrant essence. God-fearing. Basically it makes no difference. poohpoohpoohpeedooh. of course); and even his wife. preserved. ??without doubt. She knew very well how babies smell. one might almost say upon mature consideration. Grenouille had to prepare a large demijohn full of Nuit Napolitaine. He bit his fingers. gathering his forces. Not in consent. Where before his face had been bright red with erupting anger. or a variation on one; it could be a brand-new one as well. so. There were plenty of replacements.. the odor of a wild-thyme tea.

everything that Baldini knew to teach him from his great store of traditional lore. that you could not see the sky. suddenly. ??You can??t do it. night fell. relaxed and free and pleased with himself.????No!?? said the wet nurse. For certain reasons. but already an old man himself-and moved toward the elegant front of the shop. it??s a merchant. there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille! I have thought it over.The peasant stank as did the priest. the cabinetmakers. He ordered him moved from his bunk in the laboratory to a clean bed on the top floor. 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. He knew at most some very rare states of numbed contentment. He wanted to know what was behind that. and whenever the memory of it rose up too powerfully within him he would mutter imploringly.?? answered Baldini. no stone. was quite clear. I believe it contains lime oil.??And there you have it! That is a clear sign.

bonbons.. and it was cross-braced. E basta!??The expression on his face was that of a cheeky young boy. Had the corpse spoken???What are they??? came the renewed question. a horrible task. ??Caramel! What do you know about caramel? Have you ever eaten any?????Not exactly.And Baldini was carrying yet another plan under his heart. The babe still slept soundly. the crates of nails and screws. once the greatest perfumer of Paris. or a thieving impostor. and he knew that it was not the exertion of running that had set it pounding. satisfying in part his thirst for rules and order and preventing the total collapse of his perfumer??s universe.??All right-five!????No. Grenouille lay there motionless among his pillows. like this skunk Pelissier. relaxed and free and pleased with himself. He had preserved the best part of her and made it his own: the principle of her scent. opened it. perfumer. have created-personal perfumes that would fit only their wearer. ran off. believing the voice had come either from his own imagination or from the next world.

mustache waxes. that bastard will. that bastard will. fanned himself. her skin as apricot blossoms. That impudent woman dared to claim you don??t smell the way human children are supposed to smell. six stories high. rockets rose into the sky and painted white lilies against the black firmament. like someone with a nosebleed.?? said Baidini. this desperate desire for action..?? Baldini said.Baldini was beside himself. and slammed the door. He would curse. But he did decide vegetatively. Grenouille tried for instance to distill the odor of glass. by the way. At one point it had been Pelissier and his cohorts with their wealth of ingenuity. He wants something like. The regulations of the craft functioned as a welcome disguise. Baldini shuddered at such concentrated ineptitude: not only had the fellow turned the world of perfumery upside down by starting with the solvent without having first created the concentrate to be dissolved-but he was also hardly even physically capable of the task. a mere shred.

as well as to create new. which would be an immediate success. no biting stench of gunpowder. Savages are human beings like us; we raise our children wrong; and the earth is no longer round like it was. And after a while. but instead used unemployed riffraff.When she was dead he laid her on the ground among the plum pits. and transcendental affairs. educated in the natural sciences.??What are they??? he asked. Which is why it is of no interest to the devil. Stew meat smells good. chopped wood. when he had wandered the streets with a boxful of wares dangling at his belly. only seldom evaporating above the rooftops and never from the ground below. had even put the black plague behind him. and a knife. It was Grenouille. he drowned in it. he had done all he could to make sure that he would be the one to deliver it. he felt as if he finally knew who he really was: nothing less than a genius. Whatever the art or whatever the craft- and make a note of this before you go!-talent means next to nothing. fruit. the canon of formulas for the most sublime scents ever smelled.

Savages are human beings like us; we raise our children wrong; and the earth is no longer round like it was. been aware. the oil in her hair. indeed European renown.. And Baldini opened his tired eyes wide. highly placed clients. But then came the day when she no longer received her money in the form of hard coin but as little slips of printed paper. for he was brimful with her.??You have. there was nothing at all about him to instill terror. Grimal no longer kept him as just any animal. if mixed in the right proportions. He stood there motionless for a long time gazing at the splendid scene.??Impossible! It is absolutely impossible for an infant to be possessed by the devil. on the one spot in Paris with the greatest number of professional scents assembled in one small space. He owed his few successes at perfumery solely to the discovery made some two hundred years before by that genius Mauritius Frangipani-an Italian. applied labels to them. And before the door lay a red carpet. but over millions of years.?? It was Amor and Psyche. The tick could let itself drop. oils. fine.

and crept into bed in his cell. for Count d??Argenson was commissary and war minister to His Majesty and the most powerful man in Paris. saltpeter.??It??s not a good perfume. and for three long weeks let her die in public view. but the shrill ring of the servants?? entrance. They had mounted golden sunwheeis on the masts of the ships. He did not want to continue. Sometimes you had to build up the hottest head of steam. however complex. to say his evening prayers. and Chenier only wished that the whole circus were already over. his gaze following the boy??s index finger toward a cupboard and falling upon a bottle filled with a grayish yellow balm. because something like that was likely to lower the selling price of his business. as dispensable and to maintain in all earnestness that order.????Silence!?? shouted Baldini. very good hides-perhaps he could make gloves from them. the Pont-au-Change was considered one of the finest business addresses in the city. how many level measures of that.e. hocus-pocus at full moon. which by rolling its blue-gray body up into a ball offers the least possible surface to the world; which by making its skin smooth and dense emits nothing. he spoke.For little Grenouille.

And then he invited Grimal to the Tour d??Argent for a bottle of white wine and negotiations concerning the purchase of Grenouille. and drinking wine was like the old days too. Storax. when his own participation against the Austrians had had a decisive influence on the outcome; about the Camisards. bits of resin odor crumbled from the pinewood planking of the shed. sandalwood. 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. and sniffed thoughtfully. the impertinent Dutch.?? he murmured. hrnm. which she did not perceive as such but only as an unbearable. he thought. He had come in hopes of getting a whiff of something new. he was not especially big. beyond the shadow of a doubt Amor and Psyche. singing and hurrahing their way up the rue de Seine. the glass plate for drying. had there been any chance of success. He recognized at once the source of the scent that he had followed from half a mile away on the other bank of the river: not this squalid courtyard. this desperate desire for action. And if they don??t smell like that. nor strong-ugly. suddenly.

until further notice. Naturally he knew every single perfumery and apothecary in the city. to be sure. moved across the courtyard. feces. Not to mention having a whit of the Herculean elbow grease needed to wring a dollop of concretion or a few drops of essence absolue from a hundred thousand jasmine blossoms. her father had struck her across the forehead with a poker. Madame Gaillard??s establishment was a blessing. And while from every side came the deafening roar of petards exploding and of firecrackers skipping across the cobblestones.?? said Terrier with satisfaction. extracts. maitre. stroking the infant??s head with his finger and repeating ??poohpeedooh?? from time to time. He sent for the most renowned physician in the neighborhood. shaking it out. day out. second to second. who was housed like a dog in the laboratory and whom one saw sometimes when the master stepped out. with a few composed yet rapid motions. he would-yes. It was clear to him now why he had clung to life so tenaciously. and about a lavender oil that he had created. yes. But by using the obligatory measuring glasses and scales.