frosty wind or of well water.. and he didn??t want the infant to be harmed in the process.

can??t I??? Grenouille asked
can??t I??? Grenouille asked. then out along the rue Saint-Antoine to the Bastille. because he knew that he had already conquered the man who had yielded to him. in fragments. Embarrassed at what his scream had revealed. and increasingly large doses of perfume sprinkled onto his handkerchief and held to his nose. but like pastry soaked in honeysweet milk-and try as he would he couldn??t fit those two together: milk and silk! This scent was inconceivable... of course); and even his wife. of water and stone and ashes and leather. A hue and cry arose. had even put the black plague behind him. The more Grenouille mastered the tricks and tools of the trade. only the most important ones. He distilled brass. grabbed the neck of the bottle with his right hand. the bottom well covered with water. Priests dawdling in coffeehouses. the devil himself could not possibly have a hand in it. and there he handed over the child. The eyes were of an uncertain color. He couldn??t go to Pelissier and buy perfume in person! But through a go-between. like vegetables that had been boiled too long. as if he were arming himself against yet another attack upon his most private self. like a griddle cake that??s been soaked in milk.

although slight and frail as well. your storage rooms are still full. If he made it through. He opened the jalousie and his body was bathed to the knees in the sunset. in such quantities that he could get drunk on it. plus bergamot and extract of rosemary et cetera. more succinctly. a miracle. I??m not in the mood to test it at the moment. because details meant difficulties and difficulties meant ruffling his composure. incapable of distinguishing colors. if it was He at all. where he was forever synthesizing and concocting new aromatic combinations. up on top. but it only bellowed more loudly and turned completely blue in the face and looked as if it would burst from bellowing. one of perfectly grotesque immodesty. But he let the idea go. In three short. at her own expense. saw himself looking out at the river and watching the water flow away. This set him apart not only from the apprentices and journeymen. Paris produced over ten thousand new foundlings. He pulled back his own nose as if he smelled something foul that he wanted nothing to do with. however. but. the crates of nails and screws.

virtually a small factory. digested the rottenest vegetables and spoiled meat. But now be so kind as to tell me: what does a baby smell like when he smells the way you think he ought to smell? Well?????He smells good. I??ve lost my nose. he was not especially big. No one poled barges against the current here. walls. filtering. then he presents me with a bill.. Someone. young man. He fashioned grotes-queries. poohpeedooh!??After a while he pulled his finger back. It??s well known that a child with the pox smells like horse manure. Grenouille yielded nothing except watery secretions and bloody pus.????Aha. and so on. smoking burnt sacrifices.?? 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. We shall rip the mask from his ugly face and show the innovator just what the old craft is capable of. bottles. Baldini stood there and stared into the night. People reading books. purely as matters of man??s inherent morality and reason.

Baldini!The second rule is: perfume lives in time; it has its youth. a thick floating layer of oil. 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. for the trip to Messina. By mixing his aromatic powder with alcohol and so transferring its odor to a volatile liquid. all in gold: a golden flacon. and so on. Then. A little while later. ??but plenty to me. Can I mix it for you. young. to live. isolated. she squatted down under the gutting table and there gave birth. Such things come only with age. It was a mixture of human and animal smells. your storage rooms are still full. the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings. He fashioned grotes-queries. ??Why. A girl was sitting at the table cleaning yellow plums. For a moment he allowed himself the fantastic thought that he was the father of the child. or will. He required a lad of few needs. deaf.

morals. after all. and cords. that is of no use if one does not have the formula!????.. hissed out in reptile fashion. so magical. and I do not wish to be disturbed under any circumstances. where other children hardly dared go even with a lantern. rats. singing and hurrahing their way up the rue de Seine. Terrier lifted the basket and held it up to his nose. and within a couple of weeks he was set free or allowed out of the country. he hauled water up from the river. something that came from him. Strangely enough. People read incendiary books now by Huguenots or Englishmen. the odor of brocade embroidered with silver thread. With the whole court looking on. teas. I have a journeyman already. he had not sat down at his desk to ponder and wait for inspiration. very good hides-perhaps he could make gloves from them. a matter of hope. there were winters when three or four of her two dozen little boarders died. it never had before.

I don??t know if it will be how a craftsman would do it. I??ve lost my nose. But not so the nose. pass it beneath his nose almost as elegantly as his master. The regulations of the craft functioned as a welcome disguise. He picked up the leather. noticed that he had certain abilities and qualities that were highly unusual. this Amor and Psyche. whose death he could only witness numbly. with abstract ideas and the like. Whoever has survived his own birth in a garbage can is not so easily shoved back out of this world again. God damn it all. Baldini??s laboratory was not a proper place for fabricating floral or herbal oils on a grand scale. and opened the door. there were winters when three or four of her two dozen little boarders died. These Diderots and d??Alemberts and Voltaires and Rousseaus or whatever names these scribblers have-there are even clerics among them and gentlemen of noble birth!-they??ve finally managed to infect the whole society with their perfidious fidgets. but he did not yet have the ability to make those scents realities.THE GOATSKINS for the Spanish leather! Baldini remembered now. And once. like the bleached bones of little birds. more like curds . as if he were arming himself against yet another attack upon his most private self. snatching at the next fragment of scent. and walked to the farthest corner of the room. He ran to get paper and ink. at well-spaced intervals.

sniffing greedily. He examined the millions and millions of building blocks of odor and arranged them systematically: good with good. twenty years too late-did death arrive. humanist. salt. he. The boards were oak.. the small and large measuring glasses -and placed them in proper order on the oaken surface. And the scene was so firmly etched in his memory that he did not forget it to his dying day. deaf. he doesn??t cry.?? For years. He knew at most some very rare states of numbed contentment. and whenever he did manage to concoct a new perfume of his own.Away with it! thought Terrier. the sea. A master. it would not have been good form for the police anonymously to set a child at the gates of the halfway house. soaking up its scent. and was living in a tiny furnished room in the rue des Coquilles. And why all this insanity? Because the others were doing the same. So there was nothing new awaiting him.??It??s all done.When he had smelled his fill of the thick gruel of the streets. and asked sharply.

perhaps? Does he twitch and jerk? Does he move things about in the room? Does some evil stench come from him?????He doesn??t smell at all.Perfumes like Pelissier??s could make a shambles of the whole market. Baldini no longer considered him a second Frangipani or. attention. and set out again for home in the rue de Charonne. 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.FATHER TERRIER was an educated man. however-especially after the first flask had been replaced with a second and set aside to settle-the brew separated into two different liquids: below. In the course of the next week. He saw it splash and rend the glittering carpet of water for an instant.??And to soothe the wet nurse and to put his own courage to the test.??And so he learned to speak. our nose will fragment every detail of this perfume. ??How much of it do you want? Shall I fill this big bottle here to the rim??? And he pointed to a mixing bottle that held a gallon at the very least.. should be sullied by such shabby dealings! But what was he to do? Count Verhamont was. that an honest man should feel compelled to travel such crooked paths! How awful. Baldini enjoyed the blaze of the fire and the flickering red of the flames and the copper. best nose in Paris! Come here to the table and show me what you can do. taking along the treasures he bore inside him. I can only presume that it would certainly do no harm to this infant if he were to spend a good while yet lying at your breast. he knotted his hands behind his back. scrutinizing him. he thought. away this very instant with this . pure and unadulterated.

ON SEPTEMBER 1. He gave the world nothing but his dung-no smile. They smell like fresh butter. mixing powders from wheat flour and almond bran and pulverized violet roots. he was for the first time more human than animal. shoved and jostled his way through and burrowed onward.??BALDSNI: Correct. and Corinth. had taken a wife. he would simply have to go about things more slowly. he had done all he could to make sure that he would be the one to deliver it. his gorge. ??What else?????Orange blossom. chocolates. No. He would attach undying fame to Grenouille??s name. Baldini. But as a vinegar maker he was entitled to handle spirits. he plopped his wig onto his bald head. each house so tightly pressed to the next. they left behind a very monotonous mixture of smells: sulfur. And therefore what he was now called upon to witness-first with derisive hauteur. too. a man of honor.????I don??t want any money..

He succeeded in producing oils from nettles and from cress seeds. He was only sleeping very soundly. a barbaric bungler. then open them up. The goal of the hunt was simply to possess everything the world could offer in the way of odors. like a child playing with blocks-inventive and destructive. the table would be sold tomorrow. Naturally he knew every single perfumery and apothecary in the city. scraped together from almost a century of hard work.?? Baldini continued. but which later. with no apparent norms for his creativity. And when at last a puff of air would toss a delicate thread of scent his way. The fish. gathering his forces. To create a clandestine imitation of a competitor??s perfume and sell it under one??s own name was terribly improper.??And then Grenouille had vanished.?? said the wet nurae. purely as matters of man??s inherent morality and reason. You probably picked up your information at Pelissier??s.He could hardly smell anything now. from which transports of children were dispatched daily to the great public orphanage in Rouen. virtually a small factory..In the period of which we speak. what is your name.

He looked as if he were hiding behind his own outstretched arm. setting the scales wrong.. he would make mistakes that could not fail to capture Baldini??s notice: forgetting to filter. you muttonhead! Smell when you??re smelling and judge after you have smelled! Amor and Psyche is not half bad as a perfume. pointing again into the darkness. And Pascal was a great man. Just as a sharp ax can split a log into tiny splinters. ??lay them there!??Grenouille stepped out from Baldini??s shadow. extracts. And took his scoldings for the mistakes. gaseous state. Giuseppe Baldini-owner of the largest perfume establishment in Paris. but a better.??Storax??? he asked. Which is why it is of no interest to the devil. It was not the Persian chimes at the shop door. and a sense for the hierarchy within a guild. Joining them with the other parts of the composition-which he believed he had recognized as well-would unite the segments into a pretty. only to let it out again with the proper exhalations and pauses. But death did not come. which she did not perceive as such but only as an unbearable. And the successes were so overwhelming that Chenier accepted them as natural phenomena and did not seek out their cause.. pass it rapidly under his nose. it would necessarily be at the expense of the other children or.

let it be noted!-that odors are soluble in rectified spirit. was present with pen and paper to observe the process with Argus eyes and to document it step by step. And so.????Yes. ??Caramel! What do you know about caramel? Have you ever eaten any?????Not exactly. he was about to say ??devil. the bustle of it all down to the smallest detail was still present in the air that had been left behind. Baldini leading with the candle. he used for the first time quite late-he used only nouns. but they did not dare try it. who had parsed a scent right off his forehead. an armchair for the customers. For the first time in years. no biting stench of gunpowder. the dark cupboards along the walls. Let the Brouets. then open them up. not her face. he learned the language of perfumery. He meant. Baldini would not dream of scenting Count Verhamont??s Spanish hides with it. Her sweat smelled as fresh as the sea breeze. He learned to spell a bit and to write his own name. And once. all the rest aren??t odors. entirely without hope.

the embroiderers of epaulets. who. Grenouille the tick stirred again. and that would not be good; no. This confusion of senses did not last long at all. olfactorily speaking.THE LITTLE MAN named Grenouille first uncorked the demijohn of alcohol.THE NEXT MORNING he went straight to Grimal. which connected the right bank with the He de la Cite. who.??What are they??? he asked. The scoundrel conjured with complete mastery of his art. while he was too old and too weak to oppose the powerful current. To be sure. night fell. I??ll allow you to start with a third of a mixing bottle. from anise seeds to zapota seeds. the nose seemed to fix on a particular target. was something he had added on later. ??Stop it!?? he screeched. More remarkable still.When she was dead he laid her on the ground among the plum pits.. quiet as a feeding pike in a great. A cleverly managed bit of concocting. And every botched attempt was dreadfully expensive.

He would then hurry over to the cupboard with its hundreds of vials and start mixing them haphazardly. the whiff of a magnificent premonition for only a second. and if it isn??t a merchant. that bastard will.. But she was uneasy. Maitre Baldini? You want to make this leather I??ve brought you smell good. It??s totally out of the question. He would try something else... the impertinent boy. who in their ostensible innocence think only of themselves. the best wigmakers and pursemakers. should be sullied by such shabby dealings! But what was he to do? Count Verhamont was. or as the legendary fireworks in honor of the dauphin??s birth. for boiling.. and a few weeks later decapitated at the place de Greve. And once again she received in return only these stupid slips of paper. for eight hundred years. highly placed clients. rounded pastry.. which had on first encounter so profoundly shaken him. more costly scents.

he gathered up the last fragments of her scent under her chin.. Grenouille. But it??s the bastard himself. He discovered-and his nose was of more use in the discovery than Baldini??s rules and regulations-that the heat of the fire played a significant role in the quality of the distillate. Through the wrought-iron gates at their portals came the smells of coach leather and of the powder in the pages?? wigs. they would open a new chapter in the history of perfumery. shimmering silk. once the greatest perfumer of Paris. and that Grenouille did not possess. and a cunning apparatus to snatch the scented soul from matter. one that could arise only in exhausted. he had done all he could to make sure that he would be the one to deliver it. Sometimes there were intervals of several minutes before a shred was again wafted his way. and inevitably. As you know. and flared his nostrils. Not because he asked himself how this lad knew all about it so exactly. the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie from the rue Saint-Denis!-think it ought to smell. I cannot deliver the Spanish hide to the count.And now to work. and the bankers. into the stronger main current. the whiff of a magnificent premonition for only a second.????How much more do you want. To this end.

He saw it splash and rend the glittering carpet of water for an instant. Blood and wood and fresh fish. and back to her belly. fixing the percentage of ambergris tincture in the formula ridiculously high. Chenier would swear himself to silence. relaxed and free and pleased with himself. for instance. oils. But that was the temper of the times. monsieur.He would often just stand there. but could also actually smell them simply upon recollection. Then he closed the window. he was for the first time more human than animal. mixing with the wind as they unfurled. racing to America in a month-as if people hadn??t got along without that continent for thousands of years. The boards were oak. but not the freshness of limes or pomegranates. And a wind must have come up. Grenouille burned to see a perfumery from the inside; and when he had heard that leather was to be delivered to Baldini. Gone was the homey thought that his might be his own flesh and blood. With each new day. After a few steps. The very attitude was perverse.?? said the wet nurse. acquired in humility and with hard work.

and pour the stuff into the river. and it may well be that God has given you a passably fine nose. What a feat! What an epoch-making achievement! Comparable really only to the greatest accomplishments of humankind. while his. he said nothing to his wife while they ate. And once. paid for with our taxes. according to all the rules of the art. to convert other people??s formulas and instructions into perfumes and other scented products. This confusion of senses did not last long at all. Baldini demanded one day that Grenouille use scales. as if someone had opened a door leading into a vast. who every season launched a new scent that the whole world went crazy over. from somewhere to the southeast. was not enough.. grabbed the neck of the bottle with his right hand. The smell of the sea pleased him so much that he wanted one day to take it in.?? ??savoy cabbage. salted hides were hung. that would make him greater than the great Frangipani. as only footmen can shout. They pull it out. landscape. ??wood. her red lips.

He looked as if he were hiding behind his own outstretched arm. Kneaded frankincense. He didn??t want to be an inventor. and left his study. ??All right then. bad with bad. In three short.??Baldini held his candle up to this lump of humankind wheezing ??storax?? and thought: Either he is possessed. how much cream had been left in it and so on. officer La Fosse revoked his original decision and gave instructions for the boy to be handed over on written receipt to some ecclesiastical institution or other. Baldini watched the hearth. he would bottle up inside himself the energies of his defiance and contumacy and expend them solely to survive the impending ice age in his ticklike way.. and had the child demanded both. both on the same object. that women threw themselves at him. there was no one in the world who could have taught him anything. but merely yielding to silent resignation-at Grenouille??s small dying body there in the bed.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. as she had done four times before. Chenier would swear himself to silence..She was so frozen with terror at the sight of him that he had plenty of time to put his hands to her throat.????Formula. For God??s sake. the damned English.

pulpy.. A clear. the impertinent boy. And therefore what he was now called upon to witness-first with derisive hauteur. looked around him to make sure no one was watching. which makes itself extra small and inconspicuous so that no one will see it and step on it. seemed at once to be utterly meaningless. wart removers. There??s jasmine! Alcohol there! Bergamot there! Storax there!?? Grenouille went on crowing. That??s the bungler??s name. he sniffed all around the infant??s head. already stank so vilely that the smell masked the odor of corpses. all of them?? that he knew. period.He was not particular about it. so balanced. People even traveled to Lapland. And then it will be only too apparent that this ostensibly magical scent was created by the most ordinary. moreover.. he thought. thus. he was brought by ill fortune to the Quai des Ormes. endangering the future of the other children. He owed his few successes at perfumery solely to the discovery made some two hundred years before by that genius Mauritius Frangipani-an Italian.

THE LITTLE MAN named Grenouille first uncorked the demijohn of alcohol. a sinful odor. the left one. Of course he realized that the purpose of perfumes was to create an intoxicating and alluring effect. a few balms. as long as someone paid for them. it would necessarily be at the expense of the other children or. that??s all Wasn??t it Horace himself who wrote. that much was clear. He staged this whole hocus-pocus with a study and experiments and inspiration and hush-hush secrecy only because that was part of the professional image of a perfumer and glover. in a flacon of costliest cut agate with a holder of chased gold and. Normally human odor was nothing special. to crush seeds and pits and fruit rinds in oak presses. turned a corner. and that he could not hold that something back or hide it.BALDINI: And I am thinking of creating something for Count Verhamont that will cause a veritable furor. But it was never to be. but had read the philosophers as well. porcelain. as surely as his name was Doctor Procope. had sworn there had never been anything wrong with him. love-or whatever all those things are called that children are said to require- were totally dispensable for the young Grenouille. So what if. What a shame. Certainly not like caramel. not even a good licorice-water vendor.

tall and spindly and fragile. means everything. Chenier thought as he checked the sit of his wig in the mirror-a shame about old Baldini; a shame about his beautiful shop. that would make him greater than the great Frangipani. and after countless minutes reached the far bank. more despondent than before-as despondent as he was now. for he could sense rising within him the first waves of his anger at this obstinate female.?? Grenouille interrupted with a rasp. scent bags. it would doubtless have abruptly come to a grisly end. And that did not suit him at all. The first was the cloak of middle-class respectability. 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. Malaga. Its nose awoke first. to beat those precious secrets out of that moribund body. pulled her arms to her chest. there are only a few thousand. for reasons of economy. and so he would follow through on his decision. Except for ??yes?? and ??no??-which. pulled her arms to her chest. Baldini couldn??t smell fast enough to keep up with him. No one was on the street. and beauty spots. second to second.

but flat on the top and bottom like a melon-as if that made a damn bit of difference! In every field. He didn??t even say ??incredible?? anymore. done her duty. They probably realized that he could not be destroyed. moreover.The young Grenouille was such a tick. for whatever reason. immediately if possible. He had preserved the best part of her and made it his own: the principle of her scent. let alone keep track of the order in which it occurred or make even partial sense of the procedure. But she dreaded a communal. He required a minimum ration of food and clothing for his body. First he must seal up his innermost compartments. in which she could only be the loser. they took the alembic from the fire. Through the wrought-iron gates at their portals came the smells of coach leather and of the powder in the pages?? wigs. 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. and would never be able to mingle himself with its smell. with pap.AND SO HE gladly let himself be instructed in the arts of making soap from lard. took one look at Grenouille??s body. Pascal said that. a matter of hope. and could be revived only with the most pungent smelling salts of clove oil. hissed out in reptile fashion. Although dead in her heart since childhood.

then with dismay. spread them with smashed gallnuts. waved it in the air to drive off the alcohol. it??s a tradesman. to Baldini. pulled back the bolt.. so it was said. Nothing more was needed. Go now! Come on!??And he picked up one of the candlesticks and passed through the door into the shop. grabbed the candlestick from the desk. The river. And for what? For three francs a week!????Ah. all is lost. day out. a sinful odor. By the light of his candle. ??Don??t you want to. he thought. and rosemary to cover the demand-here came Pelissier with his Air de Muse. I??ve lost ten pounds and been eating like I was three women. and that was enough for her. removing his perfume-moistened hand from its neck and wiping it on his shirttail.????How much of it shall I make for you. don??t we???And with that he took two candlesticks that stood at the end of the large oak table and lit them..

he spoke.?? said the wet nurse.?? replied Baldini sternly. and say: ??Chenier.?? He had seen wood a hundred times before. and walked to the farthest corner of the room. To such glorious heights had Baldini??s ideas risen! And now Grenouille had fallen ill. his closet seemed to him a palace. more succinctly. for Chenier was a gossip. It was the first time Grenouille had ever been in a perfumery. it could have grabbed the other possibility open to it and held its peace and thus have chosen the path from birth to death without a detour by way of life. And only then does it abandon caution and drop. the status of a journeyman at the least. ??Yes.?? said the wet nurse. but not as bergamot. Baldini demanded one day that Grenouille use scales. He despised technical details. that. In the evening. and that was why Chenier must know nothing about it. a fine nose. He required a minimum ration of food and clothing for his body. It made you wish for a return to the old rigid guild laws. knew it a thousandfold.

to say his evening prayers. not some sachet. smaller courtyard. More remarkable still. Waits. I have the recipe in my nose. of tincture of musk mixed with oils of neroli and tuberose. hmm. a man of honor. for soaking. He felt sick to his stomach. that much was clear. After all. He wanted to get rid of the thing..CHENIER: It??s a terribly common scent. And what are a few drops-though expensive ones. splashed a bit of one bottle. stood Baldini himself. But not so the nose. don??t you??? Grenouille hissed. together with whom he had haunted the Cevennes; about the daughter of a Huguenot in the Esterel. She could find them at night with her nose. Baldini opened the back room that faced the river and served partly as a storeroom. would bring them all to full bloom. and about a lavender oil that he had created.

that women threw themselves at him. then shooed his wife out of the sickroom. to live. ??? he asked. seaweedy. The odor might be an old acquaintance. people might begin to talk. but nothing else. where at night the city gates were locked. the fishy odor of her genitals. as He has many. for it meant you had to measure and weigh and record and all the while pay damn close attention. She had. just for once to see everything flowing toward him; and for a few moments he basked in the notion that his life had been turned around. Of course.?? But now he was not thinking at all. Now it was this boy with his inexhaustible store of new scents. snot-nosed brat besides. Let his successor deal with the vexation!The bell rang shrilly again.He would often just stand there. God-fearing. hundreds of thousands of specific smells and kept them so clearly. too. nor that of a May rain or a frosty wind or of well water.. and he didn??t want the infant to be harmed in the process.