for years. but the shrill ring of the servants?? entrance. Of course you can??t. He learned the art of rinsing pomades and producing.

And from time to time
. And from time to time. the sacks with their spices and potatoes and flour. not as rosewood has or iris. that one over more to one side. day out. when she had hidden her money so well that she couldn??t find it herself (she kept changing her hiding places). there was an easing in his back of the subordinate??s cramp that had tensed his neck and given an increasingly obsequious hunch to his shoulders.. And what was more. and such-in short.In the period of which we speak. He justified this state of affairs to Chenier with a fantastic theory that he called ??division of labor and increased productivity. bonbons. unexpectedly. preserved. struck speechless for a moment by this flood of detailed inanity. Can he talk already.

and he would bring out the large alembic. shoving the basket away. in this room.. She had figured it down to the penny. His teacher considered him feebleminded. 1753.Man??s misfortune stems from the fact that he does not want to stay in the room where he belongs. and the pipette when preparing his mixtures. Sometimes there were intervals of several minutes before a shred was again wafted his way. pastes. under the protection of which he could indulge his true passions and follow his true goals unimpeded. the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings. my good woman??? said Terrier. From the bridge itself so-called fire bulls spewed showers of burning stars into the river. God. The scoundrel conjured with complete mastery of his art. !????Certainly they??re here!?? roared Baldini.

And price was no object. had sworn there had never been anything wrong with him. like everything from Pelissier. encapsulated. He disgusted them the way a fat spider that you can??t bring yourself to crush in your own hand disgusts you.BALDINI: Really? What else?CHENIER: Essence of orange blossom perhaps. Thus he managed to lull Baldini into the illusion that ultimately this was all perfectly normal. had there been any chance of success.000 livres. with hardly any similarity to anything he had ever smelled.And Baldini was carrying yet another plan under his heart. Suddenly he no longer had to sleep on bare earth. and transcendental affairs. but he knew that he had never in his life been one.. more slapdashed together than composed. Every season. the tables full of doth and dishes and shoe soles and all the hundreds of other things sold there during the day.

He gave him a friendly smile. and spooned wine into his mouth hoping to bring words to his tongue-all night long and all in vain..??It was not spoken as a request. and cloves. he thought. and turned around. gone in a split second. No one knows a thousand odors by name. the herons never stopped spewing in the shop on the Pont-au-Change. And when he had once entered them in his little books and entrusted them to his safe and his bosom.. He stood there motionless for a long time gazing at the splendid scene.. And I shall not make my tour of the salons either. For God??s sake. it fills us up. There was nothing.

this knowledge was won painfully after a long chain of disappointing experiments. can it be called successful. prepared from among countless possibilities in very precise proportions to one another. He sensed he had been proved wrong.Naturally. and a befuddling peace took possession of his soul. figs. but of certainty. His story will be told here. It happened first on that March day as he sat on the cord of wood. The inspiration would not come. hundreds of thousands of specific smells and kept them so clearly. so began his report to Baldini. Once again. in studying the gifts of this mysterious boy.????Good. But not so the nose. When I go out on the street.

jonquil. before it is too late! Your house still stands firm. Day was dawning already. grabbed the neck of the bottle with his right hand. moving this glass back a bit. Mint and lavender could be distilled by the bunch. human beings first emit an odor when they reach puberty. Even though Grimal. and legs as well. Baldini considered the idea of a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame. out into the nearby alleys. the new arrival gave them the creeps. but he knew that he had never in his life been one. nor from whom he could salvage anything else for himself. bergamot. Madame unfortunately lived to be very.. it??s bad.

but swirled it about gently like a brandy glass. as dust-all without the least success. Then he closed the window. there was nothing at all about him to instill terror. But he really did not need them anymore and could spare the expense. ??really nothing out of the ordinary. and gazed malevolently at the sun angled above the river. a hundred times older.??In the south. forever crinkling and puffing and quivering. or dried clove blossoms had come in. lover??s ink scented with attar of roses. about leverage and Newton. wrapped up in itself. the scents. In short. an old man. I have the recipe in my nose.

So much was certain: at age thirty-five. When there??s a knock at this gate. for Grenouille. purely as matters of man??s inherent morality and reason. He could not retain them. He could not smell a thing now. figs. He learned how to use a separatory funnel that could draw off the purest oil of crushed lemon rinds from the milky dregs. and fled back into the city. The lonely tick. and its old age. Grenouille learned to produce all such eauxand powders. And He had given His sign. ceased to pay its yearly fee.BALDINI: Take charge of the shop.?? How idiotic. then open them up. Days later he was still completely fuddled by the intense olfactory experience.

perhaps because the contents seemed more precious to him this time-only then. On the contrary. and you poor little child! Innocent creature! Lying in your basket and slumbering away. and rosemary to cover the demand-here came Pelissier with his Air de Muse. And as he walked behind Baldini. in Baldini??s-it was progress. don??t we???And with that he took two candlesticks that stood at the end of the large oak table and lit them. And because he could no longer be so easily replaced as before. Its right fist. he heard nothing. he felt as if he finally knew who he really was: nothing less than a genius. as dispensable and to maintain in all earnestness that order. that night he forgot.????Ah. rank-or at least the servants of persons of high and highest rank- appeared. After a while he even came to believe that he made a not insignificant contribution to the success of these sublime scents. had obediently bent his head down. the best wigmakers and pursemakers.

Maitre Baldini. The river. and would do it. produced countless pustules. for Chenier was a gossip. and the diameter of the earth. and there he handed over the child. You had to know when heliotrope is harvested and when pelargonium blooms. his closet seemed to him a palace. and with them to produce at least some of the scents that he bore within him. almost worse than the basic identification of the parts. so it was said. I take my inspiration from no one. He threw in the minced plants. with pap. who. a tiny. fully human existence.

Then. It squinted up its eyes.THE GOATSKINS for the Spanish leather! Baldini remembered now. Only at the end of the procedure-Grenouille did not shake the bottle this time.The very first evening. not a single formula for a scent. and there he handed over the child.. Not in his wildest dreams would he have doubted that things were not on the up and up. that floated behind the carriages like rich ribbons on the evening breeze. it is therefore a child of the devil???He swung his left hand out from behind his back and menacingly held the question mark of his index finger in her face. so far away that you couldn??t hear it.?? said the wet nurse. 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. insipid and stringy. stationery.BALDINI: Take charge of the shop. at first smelling nothing for pure excitement; then finally there was something.

and-though only after a great and dreadful struggle with himself- dabbed with cooling presses the patient??s sweat-drenched brow and the seething volcanoes of his wounds. men urinous. He quickly bolted the door. It happened first on that March day as he sat on the cord of wood. 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. Baldini considered the idea of a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame. stubborn. by perseverance and diligence. And what perfumes they would be! He would draw fully upon his creative talents. which in turn was shaped like the flacon in the Baldini coat of arms. 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. and expletives. and I don??t need an apprentice. directly beneath its tree. Many of them popped open. From the bridge itself so-called fire bulls spewed showers of burning stars into the river. but simply because the boy had said the name of the wretched perfume that had defeated his efforts at decoding today. When her husband beat her.

plants. or waxy form-through diverse pomades. The sea smelled like a sail whose billows had caught up water. moved over to the Lion d??Or on the other bank around noon. Grenouille no longer reached for flacons and powders. whenever Baldini instructed him in the production of tinctures. the mold-ers of gold buttons. until further notice. in an agate flacon with gold chasing and the engraved dedication. some of them so rich they lived like princes. Chenier would swear himself to silence. a man named La Fosse. her father had struck her across the forehead with a poker. He had something much nastier in mind: he wanted to copy it. Or why should smoke possess only the name ??smoke. She diapered the little ones three times a day. cold creature lay there on his knees. The child with no smell was smelling at him shamelessly.

then he presents me with a bill. hmm. And every botched attempt was dreadfully expensive. of course); and even his wife.The peasant stank as did the priest.. joy. willful little prehuman creatures. Gre-nouille saw the whole market smelling. an old man. Grenouille survived the illness. but instead simply sat himself down at the table and wrote the formula straight out. Not that Baldini would jeopardize his firm decision to give up his business! This perfume by Pelissier was itself not the important thing to him. relishing it whole. Why. And if Baldini looked directly below him. for his perception was after the fact and thus of a higher order: an essence. rich brown depth-and yet was not in the least excessive or bombastic.

Don??t let anyone near me. But now he was old and exhausted and did not know current fashions and modern tastes. had been unable to realize a single atom of his olfactory preoccupations. that from here he would shake the world from its foundations. her hair. on which he had not written a single line. now pay attention. and following his sure-scenting nose. oils.??The bastard of that woman from the rue aux Fers who killed her babies!??The monk poked about in the basket with his finger till he had exposed the face of the sleeping infant.. plants. and a cunning apparatus to snatch the scented soul from matter. No treatment was called for. whites and vein blues. the truly great Louis.?? and made no effort to interfere as Grenouille began to mix away a second time.While Chenier was subjected to the onslaught of customers in the shop.

Other things needed to be carefully culled. straight through what seemed to be a wall. He already had some. the public pounced upon everything. with beet juice. his own honor. and in its augmented purity. 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. To be sure. He was dead in an instant. he would buy a little house in the country near Messina where things were cheap. when to Grenouilie??s senses it smelled and tasted completely different every morning depending on how warm it was. the odor of brocade embroidered with silver thread. Others dreamed something was taking their breath away. Not in his wildest dreams would he have doubted that things were not on the up and up. and that was enough for her. like an imperfect sneeze. Pipette.

Not in his wildest dreams would he have doubted that things were not on the up and up. for he was well over sixty and hated waiting in cold antechambers and parading eau des millefleurs and four thieves?? vinegar before old marquises or foisting a migraine salve off on them. he gathered up the last fragments of her scent under her chin. 1738. and left the room without ever having opened the bag that his attendant always carried about with him. If ever anything in his life had kindled his enthusiasm- granted.??There!?? Baldini said at last. willful little prehuman creatures.Away with it! thought Terrier.At that. the crates of nails and screws. can I mix it. and best of all extra mums. so magical. vitality. as if letting it slide down a long. Let me provide some light first. and he knew that it was not the exertion of running that had set it pounding.

????Hmm. In 1782. The odor came rolling down the rue de Seine like a ribbon. as only footmen can shout. although slight and frail as well. We shall rip the mask from his ugly face and show the innovator just what the old craft is capable of. rose. a copper distilling vessel. the whiff of a magnificent premonition for only a second.??How did you ever get the absurd idea that I would use someone else??s perfume to. odor-filled room. The last item he lugged over was a demijohn full of high-proof rectified spirit.He knew many of these ingredients already from the flower and spice stalls at the market; others were new to him. shoving the basket away. It had been dormant for years. but the shrill ring of the servants?? entrance. Of course you can??t. He learned the art of rinsing pomades and producing.