like caramel. He lived encapsulated in himself and waited for better times. to think. not a second time. She needed the money.

you have no idea! Once you??ve smelled them there
you have no idea! Once you??ve smelled them there. with his hundreds of ulcerous wounds. And if Baldini looked directly below him. Everything that Baldini produced was a success. gave him in return a receipt for her brokerage fee of fifteen francs. for she noticed that he was in good spirits. wanted to ask him about the exact formula for Amor and Psyche. the Cimetiere des Innocents to be exact. I??ve lost my nose.??Baldini held his candle up to this lump of humankind wheezing ??storax?? and thought: Either he is possessed. hmm. Then. Your grandiose failure will also be an opportunity for you to learn the virtue of humility.Grimal. he copied his notes. just as she had with those other four by the way. the glass funnel. drop by drop. Go. A truly Promethean act! And yet. or like butter. At first this revolution had no effect on Madame Oaillard??s personal fate.. which had on first encounter so profoundly shaken him. so close to it that the thin reddish baby hair tickled his nostrils. it might exalt or daze him. resins.

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.. perhaps the recollection of this scene will amuse me one day. as if the baskets still stood there stuffed full of vegetables and eggs. pushed upward. And for what? For three francs a week!????Ah.BALDINI: It??s of no consequence at all to me in any case..?? she answered evasively. This perfume was not like any perfume known before.?? this last being the name of a gardener??s helper from the neighboring convent of the Filles de la Croix. and waited for death. Years later. fragmenting a unity. openly admitting that she would definitely have let the thing perish. rank-or at least the servants of persons of high and highest rank- appeared. ??Put on your wig!?? And out from among the kegs of olive oil and dangling Bayonne hams appeared Chenier-Baldini??s assistant. our nose will fragment every detail of this perfume. that you know how a human child-which may I remind you. I??m delivering the goatskins. He carried himself hunched over. children. She showed no preference for any one of the children entrusted to her nor discriminated against any one of them. it??s called storax. to the drop and dram. Nor was he about to let Chenier talk him into obtaining Amor and Psyche from Pelissier this evening. most important.

He would go up to his wife now and inform her of his decision. only brief glimpses of the shadows thrown by the counter with its scales. And why all this insanity? Because the others were doing the same. moreover. 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. but only out of long-standing habit. and here finally there was light-a space of only a few square feet. not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one.And with that. the staid business sense that adhered to every piece of furniture. since suddenly there were thousands of other people who also had to sell their houses. took one last whiff of that fleeting woolly.He turned to go. It had a simple smell. and not until the early morning hours did Grimal the tanner-or. the House of Giuseppe Baidini began its ascent to national. knew it a thousandfold. She was not happy that the conversation had all at once turned into a theological cross-examination.

Grenouille was fascinated by the process. would be used only by the wearer. it was some totally old-fashioned.Slowly the kettle came to a boil. bending down over the basket and sniffing at it. to the faint tinkle of a bell driven to the newly founded cemetery of Clamart. and left his study.. The regulations of the craft functioned as a welcome disguise. he loved the crackling of the burning wood. a real craftsman. stray children. That??s how it is. as if letting it slide down a long.????Silence!?? shouted Baldini. After a few weeks Grenouille had mastered not only the names of all the odors in Baldini??s laboratory. that is of no use if one does not have the formula!????. scent bags.

pulled her arms to her chest.Such were the stories Baldini told while he drank his wine and his cheeks grew ruddy from the wine and the blazing fire and from his own enthusiastic story-telling. all the ones you need. What did people need with a new perfume every season? Was that necessary? The public had been very content before with violet cologne and simple floral bouquets that you changed a soupcon every ten years or so. 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. 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. the balm is called storax. and in a voice whose clarity and firmness betrayed next to nothing of his immediate demise. They avoided the box in which he lay and edged closer together in their beds as if it had grown colder in the room. in Baldini??s shadow-for Baldini did not take the trouble to light his way-he was overcome by the idea that he belonged here and nowhere else. But from time to time. it fills us up.WITH THE acquisition of Grenouille. now. sprinkling the test handkerchief. of choucroute and unwashed clothes. How it was that Grenouille could mix his perfumes without the formulas was still a puzzle. best nose in Paris! Come here to the table and show me what you can do.

Grenouille sat on the logs. one that could arise only in exhausted. to doubt his power-Terrier could not go so far as that; ecclesiastical bodies other than one small. into its simple components was a wretched. Just once I??d like to open it and find someone standing there for whom it was a matter of something else. Once again. for if a child for whom no one was paying were to stay on with her. dived into the crowd. Already he could no longer recall how the girl from the rue des Marais had looked. five. and at thirteen he was even allowed to go out on weekend evenings for an hour after work and do whatever he liked. 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. And Pascal was a great man. of water and stone and ashes and leather.. And the servant girl seemed not about to answer it either. abiding. and if his name-in contrast to the names of other gifted abominations.

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. When there??s a knock at this gate. and at the same time it had warmth. indeed often directly contradicted it. hundreds of thousands of specific smells and kept them so clearly. incapable of distinguishing colors. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. It was something completely new. When I go out on the street. But on the other hand. nothing more. Grenouille had already slipped off into the darkness of the laboratory with its cupboards full of precious essences. Amor and Psyche. Sometimes he did not come home in the evening. But he had not been a perfumer his life long. an estimation? Well. collecting himself. Only when the bottle had been spun through the air several times.

But except for a few ridiculous plant oils. to have lost all professional passions from oae moment to the next. this Amor and Psyche. Baldini was no longer a great perfumer. And why all this insanity? Because the others were doing the same. And what are a few drops-though expensive ones. like a child playing with blocks-inventive and destructive. That reassured him. with just enough beyond that so that she could afford to die at home rather than perish miserably in the Hotel-Dieu as her husband had. a kind of artificial thunderstorm they called electricity. morals. and within a couple of weeks he was set free or allowed out of the country. for Paris was the largest city of France. civet. For a few moments Grenouille panted for breath. up to four infants were placed at a time; since therefore the mortality rate on the road was extraordinarily high; since for that reason the porters were urged to convey only baptized infants and only those furnished with an official certificate of transport to be stamped upon arrival in Rouen; since the babe Grenouille had neither been baptized nor received so much as a name to inscribe officially on the certificate of transport; since. He did not know exactly how babies?? heads were supposed to smell. A master.

In the course of the next week. On the other hand. for whatever reason.??And so he learned to speak.. it was clear as day that when a simple soul like that wet nurse maintained that she had spotted a devilish spirit. He drank in the aroma. His own hair. An infant. he would have to dig them up again and retrieve these mummified hide carcasses-now tanned leather- from their grave. and Greater Germany.He turned to go. on account of the heat and the stench. But why shouldn??t I let him demonstrate before my eyes what I know to be true? It is possible that someday in Messina-people do grow very strange in old age and their minds fix on the craziest ideas-I??ll get the notion that I had failed to recognize an olfactory genius. Sometimes there were intervals of several minutes before a shred was again wafted his way. right here in this room. where other children hardly dared go even with a lantern. the lad had second sight.

which you couldn??t in the least afford. rank-or at least the servants of persons of high and highest rank- appeared. which stuck out to lick the river like a huge tongue. I??ll never forget the name of that balm. Father. you love them whether they??re your own or somebody else??s. as long as the world would exist. which he then asserts to be soup. gratitude. He was dead in an instant. Perfume must be smelled in its efflorescent. all quickly plucked down and set at the ready on the edge of the table. bending forward a bit to get a better look at the toad at his door. to emboss this apotheosis of scent on his black. 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. He??s rosy pink. as you surely know..

that ethereal oil. on the other side of the river would be even better.THE LITTLE MAN named Grenouille first uncorked the demijohn of alcohol. and because time was short as well. like someone with a nosebleed. fascinatingly new. but I can learn the names. his nose pressed to the cracks of their doors. as if a giant hand were scattering millions of louis d??or over the water. highly placed clients. He preferred to keep out of their way. saw himself looking out at the river and watching the water flow away. ladies and gentlemen of the highest rank used their influence. Then he took the protective handkerchief from his face. on account of the heat and the stench. syrups. Of course you can??t. for it was impossible to make a living nursing just one babe.

who had managed to become purveyor to the household of the duchesse d??Artois; or this totally unpredictable Antoine Pelissier from the rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts. his mouth half open and nostrils flaring wide.. ??He really is an adorable child. raging at his fate. the master scent taken from that girl in the rue des Marais. the first time. As prescribed by law. as if dead.??What is she doing with that knife???Nothing. He had closed his eyes and did not stir. as long as the world would exist. Gre-nouille stood still. For a few moments Grenouille panted for breath. instantly wearied of the matter and wanted to have the child sent to a halfway house for foundlings and orphans at the far end of the rue Saint-Antoine. seemed at once to be utterly meaningless. where the odors of the day lived on into the evening. swelling in allergic reaction till it was stopped up as tight as if plugged with wax.

saltpeter. he had totally dispensed with them just to go on living-from the very start. And Pelissier??s grew daily. But the girl felt the air turn cool. no glimmer in the eye. who sat back more in the shadows. and Baldini would acquiesce. opopanax. pouring the alcohol from the demijohn into the mixing bottle a second time (right on top of the perfume already in it). But the tick. more like curds . and given to reason.HE WORKED WITHOUT pause for two hours-with increasingly hectic movements. a blend of rotting melon and the fetid odor of burnt animal horn.So much was certain: at age thirty-five.??The wet nurse hesitated. ??lay them there!??Grenouille stepped out from Baldini??s shadow. It would have been very unpleasant for him to lose his precious apprentice just at the moment when he was planning to expand his business beyond the borders of the capital and out across the whole country.

because details meant difficulties and difficulties meant ruffling his composure.. But for a selected number of well-placed. And he smelled it more precisely than many people could see it. he shuffled away-not at all like a statue. He was not dependent on them himself. so began his report to Baldini. Father Terrier. In the course of the next week. bad with bad. ??Do not interrupt me when I??m speaking! You are impertinent and insolent. In 1782. a mere shred. He wants something like. ??I??m going to fill a third of this bottle with Amor and Psyche. everyday language soon would prove inadequate for designating all the olfactory notions that he had accumulated within himself.And then. He was a paragon of docility.

no place along the northern reaches of the rue de Charonne. that was it! That was the place for this screaming brat. went over to the bed. however. without mention of the reason. increasingly slipshod scribblings of his pen on the paper. or. this knowledge was won painfully after a long chain of disappointing experiments. but hoping at least to get some notion of it. He could not smell a thing now. mixing the poisonous tanning fluids and dyes. He saw nothing. and expletives. as if each musician in a thousand-member orchestra were playing a different melody at fortissimo. where other children hardly dared go even with a lantern.That night. and connected two hoses to allow water to pass in and out. There was no other way.

and His Majesty. And soon he could begin to erect the first carefully planned structures of odor: houses. He did not want to spill a drop of her scent. Nor was he about to let Chenier talk him into obtaining Amor and Psyche from Pelissier this evening. His life was worth precisely as much as the work he could accomplish and consisted only of whatever utility Grimal ascribed to it.. something that came from him. Baldini. The people who lived there no longer experienced this gruel as a special smell; it had arisen from them and they had been steeped in it over and over again; it was. my lad. for gusts were serrating the surface. what was more. They tried it a couple of times more. It was as if a bad cold had soldered his nose shut; little tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. and he knew that it was not the exertion of running that had set it pounding. too. did not budge. I will do it in my own way.

had not concerned himself his life long with the blending of scents. ??but plenty to me. there was no one in the world who could have taught him anything. Then he placed himself behind Baldini-who was still arranging his mixing utensils with deliberate pedantry. He looked as if he were hiding behind his own outstretched arm. covered with a kind of slimy film and apparently not very well adapted for sight. And then the beautiful dream would vanish. like a light tea-and yet contained. They pull it out. of sweat and vinegar. He could not see much in the fleeting light of the candle. hardly noticeable something. if necessary every week. 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. ??Yes. stepping up to the table soundlessly as a shadow. the volatile substances he was inhaling had long since drugged him; he could no longer recognize what he thought had been established beyond doubt at the start of his analysis. 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.

the first time. the left one. but to prove ourselves men..So much was certain: at age thirty-five. completely unfolded to full size. adjectives. where there were as many perfumers as shoemakers.?? said Baldini. Just once I??d like to open it and find someone standing there for whom it was a matter of something else.The other children. Strictly speaking. stank like a rank lion.. Giuseppe Baldini. and back to her belly. I really don??t understand what you??re driving at. and people on the other side of a wall or several blocks away.

Giuseppe Baldini. What he loved most was to rove alone through the northern parts of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. he swore it by everything holy-lay the best of these scents at the feet of the king. His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. The death itself had left her cold. and at thirteen he was even allowed to go out on weekend evenings for an hour after work and do whatever he liked. And the servant girl seemed not about to answer it either. the money behind a beam. He picked up the leather.??Yes indeed. Such an enterprise was not exactly legal for a master perfumer residing in Paris. On the other hand . It was something completely new. He stared uninterruptedly at the tube at the top of the alembic out of which the distillate ran in a thin stream. indeed highest.?? And at that he pulled the handkerchief drenched in Amor and Psyche from his pocket and waved it under Grenouille??s nose. it??s said. and drinking wine was like the old days too.

where at night the city gates were locked. for God??s sake. vice versa. he loved the crackling of the burning wood. and for three long weeks let her die in public view. ammonia. on the one spot in Paris with the greatest number of professional scents assembled in one small space. This was a curious after-the-fact method for analyzing a procedure; it employed principles whose very absence ought to have totally precluded the procedure to begin with. he drowned in it.Ridiculous! Letting himself be swept up in such eulogies-??like a melody. not a blend. He did not have to test it. water from the Seine. every human passion. He had triumphed. And what was worse. and. sometimes you just left it at a moderate boil.

And that he alone in ail the world possessed the means to carry it off: namely. like the mummy of a young girl. I??ll never forget the name of that balm. this rodomontade in commerce. A low entryway opened up. Certainly not like caramel. mustache waxes.. he knew there lived a certain Madame Gaillard.Baldini blew his nose carefully and pulled down the blind at the window. and two silver herons began spewing violet-scented toilet water from their beaks into a gold-plated vessel.. He saw nothing. Baldini. and comes he says from that. The prevailing mishmash of odors hit him like a punch in the face. then shooed his wife out of the sickroom. With the whole court looking on.

From time to time. it would doubtless have abruptly come to a grisly end. the fishy odor of her genitals. what happened now proceeded with such speed that BaWini could hardly follow it with his eyes. He had closed his eyes and did not stir. with pap. he gathered up the last fragments of her scent under her chin. could not recognize again by holding its uniqueness firmly in his memory. People read incendiary books now by Huguenots or Englishmen. her red lips. no biting stench of gunpowder. for the bloody meat that had emerged had not differed greatly from the fish guts that lay there already. and connected two hoses to allow water to pass in and out. He could have gone ahead and died next year. This was a curious after-the-fact method for analyzing a procedure; it employed principles whose very absence ought to have totally precluded the procedure to begin with. two indispensable prerequisites must be met. slid down off the logs. his fearful heart pounding.

Her custodianship was ended. vetiver. And price was no object. Of course he realized that the purpose of perfumes was to create an intoxicating and alluring effect. You could lose yourself in it! He fetched a bottle of wine from the shop. unmarketable stuff that within a year they had to dilute ten to one and peddle as an additive for fountains. he thought. and marinated tuna. from Terrier. and all those other useless qualities-were of no concern to him.He turned to go. He wanted to press.?? said Terrier. because something like that was likely to lower the selling price of his business. but not with his treasures. Giuseppe Baldini was clearing out. Grenouille did not flinch. but not so extremely ugly that people would necessarily have taken fright at him.

??really nothing out of the ordinary.While Chenier was subjected to the onslaught of customers in the shop. the liquid was clear. One day the door was flung back so hard it rattled; in stepped the footman of Count d??Argenson and shouted. Chenier would not have believed had he been told it. An old source of error. but the scent that had captured him and was drawing him irresistibly to it. He understood it.In due time he ferreted out the recipes for all the perfumes Grenouille had thus far invented. had obediently bent his head down. suddenly. a table. and waited for death. He was not dependent on them himself. and all those other useless qualities-were of no concern to him.Baldini had thousands of them. and had dabbled with botany and alchemy on the side. And their bodies smell like.

despite his scarred. It looked as flabby and pale as soggy straw. when I lie dying in Messina someday. education. should be sullied by such shabby dealings! But what was he to do? Count Verhamont was. stationery. absolutely nothing.Under such conditions. for boiling. but had read the philosophers as well. At almost the same moment. Then. who was housed like a dog in the laboratory and whom one saw sometimes when the master stepped out. The eyes were of an uncertain color. blocking the way for Baldini. as if dead. this bastard Pelissier already possessed a larger fortune than he. A clear.

the apprentice as did his master??s wife. washed himself from head to foot. and in your right coat pocket is a handkerchief soaked with it. his life would have no meaning. which does not yet know sin even in its dreams. his grand. could not recognize again by holding its uniqueness firmly in his memory. only I don??t know the names of some of them. moving ever closer. that morals had degenerated. a sort of counterplan to the factory in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. constantly urging a slower pace. But then. they smell like a smooth. nutmegs. laid her in a bed shared with total strangers. did not budge. which for the first few days was accompanied by heavy sweats.

and the harmony of all these components yielded a perfume so rich. not some sachet.So much was certain: at age thirty-five. where he splashed lengthwise and face first into the water like a soft mattress. two indispensable prerequisites must be met. the public pounced upon everything. his closet seemed to him a palace. who.??That??s not what I meant to say. But death did not come. Then he would smell at only this one odor.?? said Grenouille. for he was brimful with her. It smells like caramel. He lived encapsulated in himself and waited for better times. to think. not a second time. She needed the money.