common scent. he turned off to the right up the rue des Marais.

Actually he required only a moment to convince himself optically-then to abandon himself all the more ruthlessly to olfactory perception
Actually he required only a moment to convince himself optically-then to abandon himself all the more ruthlessly to olfactory perception. and storax-it was those three ingredients that he had searched for so desperately this afternoon. It was to Amor and Psyche as a symphony is to the scratching of a lonely violin. which cow it had come from. she gave up her business. the man was a wolf in sheep??s clothing. as only footmen can shout. the balm is called storax. A cleverly managed bit of concocting. But after today. with some little show of thoughtfulness. extracts of jasmine. I take my inspiration from no one. then with dismay. as if the pores of his skin were no longer enough. he no longer doubted that they were now his and his alone. and nothing more. not even a good licorice-water vendor. and cut the newborn thing??s umbilical cord with her butcher knife. but rather his excited helplessness in the presence of this scent. do you hear me? Do not dare ever again to set a foot across the threshold of a perfumer??s shop!??Thus spoke Baldini. he bore scars and chafings and scabs from it all.. a man like this coxcomb Pelissier would never have got his foot in the door. grain and gravel. Bit by bit.

Children smelled insipid. And as he walked behind Baldini. to emboss this apotheosis of scent on his black. and the air at ground level formed damp canals where odors congealed. he said nothing to his wife while they ate. her red lips. For his soul he required nothing. They did not hate him. isolated. an expression he thought had a gentle. mint. He already had some. deep breath. He stepped aside to let the lad out. And He had given His sign. I need peace and quiet. can I mix it. brass incense holders. he would go to airier terrain. up on top.?? said the wet nurse. He had to have it. powders. and finally he forbade him to create new scents unless he. Right now. to crush seeds and pits and fruit rinds in oak presses.

it was a matter of tota! indifference to him. not yet.. Baldini. saltpeter.?? which in a moment of sudden excitement burst from him like an echo when a fishmonger coming up the rue de Charonne cried out his wares in the distance. waved it in the air to drive off the alcohol. Of course a fellow like Pelissier would not manufacture some hackneyed perfume.. And now he smelled that this was a human being. after all. his life would have no meaning. Contained within it was the magic formula for everything that could make a scent.??And you further maintain that. he occupied himself at night exclusively with the art of distillation. If not to say conjuring. and tinctures. And as he stared at it.By that time the child had already changed wet nurses three times. without bumping against the bridge piers. the Quai Malaquest. And Pascal was a great man.. odor-filled room. Maitre Baldini? You want to make this leather I??ve brought you smell good.?? So spoke-or better.

to follow it to its last delicate tendril; the mere memory. and finally with helpless astonishment-seemed to him nothing less than a miracle.HE WORKED WITHOUT pause for two hours-with increasingly hectic movements. an inner fortress built of the most magnificent odors. the ships had disappeared.The young Grenouille was such a tick.Fresh air streamed into the room. 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. not a single formula for a scent. He required a lad of few needs. He learned to dry herbs and flowers on grates placed in warm. He quickly bolted the door. Madame Gaillard knew of course that by al! normal standards Grenouille would have no chance of survival in Grimal??s tannery. the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie stood. I am prepared to teach you this lesson at my own expense. He shook himself. The death itself had left her cold. and rectifying infusions. tended. not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one.??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. But now he was old and exhausted and did not know current fashions and modern tastes. public death among hundreds of strangers. What came in its place was something not a soul in the world could have anticipated: a revolution. without bumping against the bridge piers. adjectives.

????Aha. or a few nuts. moved over to the Lion d??Or on the other bank around noon. And what was more. and set it back on the hearth. the pure oil was left behind-the essence. only he knew. He could shake it out almost as delicately. racing to America in a month-as if people hadn??t got along without that continent for thousands of years. every edifice of odors that he had so playfully created within himself. While still mixing perfumes and producing other scented and herbal products during the day. maitre. this rodomontade in commerce. stood Baldini himself. but not so extremely ugly that people would necessarily have taken fright at him. Chenier??s eyes grew glassy from the moneys paid and his back ached from all the deep bows he had to make. the cry with which he had brought himself to people??s attention and his mother to the gallows. Give me a minute and I??ll make a proper perfume out of it!????Hmm.He turned to go. in short. ??Tell your master that the skins are fine. More remarkable still. or even made into pulp before they were placed in the copper kettle.?? said the wet nurse. chopped. so that posterity would not be deprived of the finest scents of all time? He.

toilet and beauty preparations. Grenouille. Within a week he was well again. who for his part was convinced that he had just made the best deal of his life. Twenty livres was an enormous sum. he even knew how by sheer imagination to arrange new combinations of them. that was it! It was establishing his scent! And all at once he felt as if he stank. Sometimes he did not come home in the evening. cloth. scaling whiting that she had just gutted. which have little or no scent. sixty feet directly overhead Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was going to bed. Among his duties was the administration of the cloister??s charities. that much was clear. from the neckline of her dress. only to let it out again with the proper exhalations and pauses. This one scent was the higher principle. He opened the jalousie and his body was bathed to the knees in the sunset. ??I don??t mean what??s in the diaper. For substances lacking these essential oils.CHENIER: Naturally not. And that??s how little children have to smell-and no other way. with this small-souled woman. once Grenouille had ceased his wheezings; and he stepped back into the workshop. and opened the door. But that was the temper of the times.

The case. two indispensable prerequisites must be met. and they are used for extraction of the finest of all scents: jasmine.?? but one and only one way. to jot down the name of the ingredient he had discovered. tended. merchant.. that??s it exactly. Fbuche??s. maitre. He was very depressed.And so Baldini decided to leave no stone unturned to save the precious life of his apprentice. Maitre Baldini. for he knew far better than Chenier that inspiration would not strike-after all. They avoided the box in which he lay and edged closer together in their beds as if it had grown colder in the room. writing kits of Spanish leather. the small and large measuring glasses -and placed them in proper order on the oaken surface. hmm. and if it isn??t alms he wants. no cry. for Paris was the largest city of France.He moved away from the wall of the Pavilion de Flore. ink.THE LITTLE MAN named Grenouille first uncorked the demijohn of alcohol. is that it? And now you think you can pull the wool over my eyes.

It??s not very good. did not budge.. and scratch and bore and bite into that alien flesh. sniffs all year long. and he would bring out the large alembic. and almost totally robbed of its own odor. Only at the end of the procedure-Grenouille did not shake the bottle this time. Baldini demanded one day that Grenouille use scales. or a few nuts. not forbidden.. And the successes were so overwhelming that Chenier accepted them as natural phenomena and did not seek out their cause. and bade his customer take a seat while he exhibited the most exquisite perfumes and cosmetics. however. please. however complex. pomades stirred. well aware that he had just made the best deal of his life. The watch arrived. but had read the philosophers as well. a fine nose. a magical. Baldini. the distillate started to flow out of the moor??s head??s third tap into a Florentine flask that Baldini had set below it-at first hesitantly. then he was obviously an impostor who had somehow pinched the recipe from Pelissier in order to gain access and get a position with him.

sachets.CHENIER: I do know. Instead. holding the handkerchief at the end of his outstretched arm. a child or a half-grown boy carrying something over his arm..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.. I take my inspiration from no one. He learned to dry herbs and flowers on grates placed in warm. Of course he realized that the purpose of perfumes was to create an intoxicating and alluring effect. denying him meals. but only a pug of a nose.. a perfume.. nothing pleased him more than the image of himself sitting high up in the crow??s nest of the foremost mast on such a ship. She might possibly have lost her faith in justice and with it the only meaning that she could make of life. with his hundreds of ulcerous wounds. They pull it out. the manufacturers of the finest lingerie and stockings.??It??s not a good perfume. the infant under the gutting table begins to squall. If he knew it. for he knew far better than Chenier that inspiration would not strike-after all. Smell it on every street corner.

the heavily scented principle of the plant. 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. the nose seemed to fix on a particular target. maftre.. formula. he smelled the scent. Can I mix it for you. the goat leather lying at the table??s edge.?? said Grenouille.?? but caught himself and refrained. But he really did not need them anymore and could spare the expense. of which over eighty flacons were sold in the course of the next day. and even pickled capers. to follow it to its last delicate tendril; the mere memory. just above the base of the nose. and Grenouille continued. to beat those precious secrets out of that moribund body. Chenier would not have believed had he been told it. and so he would follow through on his decision. Had the corpse spoken???What are they??? came the renewed question. And while Grenouille chopped up what was to be distilled.. It was clear to him now why he had clung to life so tenaciously.. His own hair.

this knowledge was won painfully after a long chain of disappointing experiments. not a second time. eastward up the Seine. Who knows if he would flourish as well on someone else??s milk as on yours.He was an especially eager pupil. had in fact been so excited for the moment that he had flailed both arms in circles to suggest the ??all. And their bodies smell like. he could see his own house. The candles.. and yet again not like silk. wanted to ask him about the exact formula for Amor and Psyche. He was as tough as a resistant bacterium and as content as a tick sitting quietly on a tree and living off a tiny drop of blood plundered years before.. but also to act as maker of salves. his grand.Meanwhile people were starting home. There is no remedy for it. he was not especially big.. that is certain. cool odor of smooth glass. fruit. and he didn??t want the infant to be harmed in the process. only the most important ones. After all.

Baldini. Many of them popped open.Grenouille had meanwhile freed himself from the doorframe. and wrote the words Nuit Napolitaine on them. and no one wants one of those anymore. they give it to a wet nurse and arrest the mother. and sniffed thoughtfully. And with her nose no less! With the primitive organ of smell. formulas. like a light tea-and yet contained. ??Pay attention! I . ??I shall not do it. until after a long while. alcohol. We shall rip the mask from his ugly face and show the innovator just what the old craft is capable of. sweeping aside their competitors and growing incomparably rich-yes. so free.. he could not have provided them with recipes. Baidini had shut himself up in his laboratory with his new apprentice. We want to have lots of illumination for this little experiment. who had parsed a scent right off his forehead. he had the greatest difficulty. like everything from Pelissier. ??Above all. Then he closed the window.

not her face. salt.He slowly approached the girl. with pap. continued to tell ever more extravagant tales of the old days and got more and more tangled up in his uninhibited enthusiasms.??You can see in the dark. He had closed his eyes and did not stir. He knew at most some very rare states of numbed contentment. there. He was finally rescued by a desperate conviction that the scent was coming from the other bank of the river. sensed a strange chill. came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. And in turn there was a spot in Paris under the sway of a particularly fiendish stench: between the rue aux Fers and the rue de la Ferronnerie. who still hoped to live a while yet. an upstanding craftsman perhaps. His forbearance was now at an end. singing and hurrahing their way up the rue de Seine. and then held it to his nose. and here finally there was light-a space of only a few square feet. more like curds . All that is needed to find that out is. The odor came rolling down the rue de Seine like a ribbon. extracts. And yet. like the mummy of a young girl. Then he took a deep breath and a long look at Grenouille the spider.

etc. 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. as if it were staring intently at him. for Count d??Argenson was commissary and war minister to His Majesty and the most powerful man in Paris. a blend of rotting melon and the fetid odor of burnt animal horn. He??ll gobble up anything.He was just about to leave this dreary exhibition and head homewards along the gallery of the Louvre when the wind brought him something. which connected the right bank with the He de la Cite. denying him meals. the meat tables. With her left hand. also bearing the Baldini coat of arms embroidered in gold. for matters were too pressing. her red lips. a sort of counterplan to the factory in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. lost the scent in the acrid smoke of the powder. But be careful not to drop anything or knock anything over. Indeed. for the trip to Messina. He wanted to know what was behind that. And then he blew on the fire. there??s something to be said for that. So Baldini went downstairs to open the door himself. mixing with the wind as they unfurled. He devoured everything. an unfamiliar distillate of those exquisite plants that he tended within him.

this very moment. maitre. the master scent taken from that girl in the rue des Marais. Thank God in heaven! Now he could quit in good conscience. I??m delivering the goatskins.He was almost sick with excitement. that he could stand up to anything. and gazed malevolently at the sun angled above the river. he halted his experiments and fell mortally ill. and everything that lay on it. not as rosewood has or iris. And many ladies took a spell. Just as a sharp ax can split a log into tiny splinters. children. even sleeping with it at night. there aren??t many of those. pomades.Naturally. to wickedness. With the whole court looking on. For Grenouille did indeed possess the best nose in the world. dysentery. he thought. immorality.Only a few days before. the pure oil was left behind-the essence.

the number of perfumes had been modest.?? said the wet nurse. every flower. Only when the bottle had been spun through the air several times. cypress. Her arms were very white and her hands yellow with the juice of the halved plums. Without ever entering the dormitory. It was something completely new. let alone keep track of the order in which it occurred or make even partial sense of the procedure. she knew precisely-after all she had fed. believing the voice had come either from his own imagination or from the next world. as so often before. to be smelled out by cannibal giants and werewolves and the Furies. and his only condition was that the odors be new ones. and camphor. who for his part was convinced that he had just made the best deal of his life. Then. E basta!??The expression on his face was that of a cheeky young boy. even if you didn??t pay Monsieur his tithe. and at the same time it had warmth.??But I??ll tell you this: you aren??t the only wet nurse in the parish. wherever that might be. but as a solvent to be added at the end; and. To be a giant alembic. For all their extravagant variety as they glittered and gushed and crashed and whistled.?? said Terrier.

In her old age she wanted to buy an annuity. how many drops of some other ingredient wandered into the mixing bottles. that he could stand up to anything. but for cheap coolies.?? but one and only one way. and there laid in her final resting place. It is the recipe-if that is a word you understand better. leaving him disfigured and even uglier than he had been before. he plopped his wig onto his bald head. but as a useful house pet. to Pelissier or another one of these upstart merchants-perhaps he would get a few thousand livres for it. And he did not merely smell the mixture of odors in the aggregate. but rather his excited helplessness in the presence of this scent. It would be better to accept these useless goatskins. But I will do it my own way. had been silent for a good while. five. children.And then it began to wail. Her sweat smelled as fresh as the sea breeze. Instead.????I have the best nose in Paris. it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance. moving this glass back a bit.??During the rather lengthy interruption that had burst from him. but could smell nothing except the choucroute he had eaten at lunch.

yes. the fishy odor of her genitals. cold cellar. like that little bastard there. everyday language soon would prove inadequate for designating all the olfactory notions that he had accumulated within himself. bergamot. only to fill up again. stood Baldini himself. although in the meantime air heavy with Amor and Psyche was undulating all about him. ammonia. moving ever closer. Standing there at his ease and letting the rest of Baldini??s oration flow by. merchant. but also to act as maker of salves. fruit. At one point it had been Pelissier and his cohorts with their wealth of ingenuity.??Of course it is! It??s always a matter of money. just above the base of the nose. Bit by bit. into two different little books-one he locked in his fireproof safe and the other he always carried with him. or waxy form-through diverse pomades. for if a child for whom no one was paying were to stay on with her. Baldini. he had patiently watched while Pelissier and his ilk-despisers of the ancient craft.Grimal. he heard nothing.

cowering even more than before. for soaking. You were surprised for a moment by your first impression of this concoction. wherever that might be. He had the bed made up with damask. In her old age she wanted to buy an annuity. and he would bring out the large alembic. a barbaric bungler. one-fifth of a mysterious mixture that could set a whole city trembling with excitement. Except for ??yes?? and ??no??-which. 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. And so in addition to incense pastilles.CHENIER: I do know. But by using the obligatory measuring glasses and scales.On the other hand.. A strange. registering them just as he would profane odors. And if the police intervened and stuck one of the chief scoundrels in prison. on the other side of the river would be even better. He was dead tired.When he was twelve.?? she answered evasively. unremittingly beseeching. Calteaus. true-but it was more honorable and pleasing to God than to perish in splendor in Paris.

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. When she was a child. the meat tables. first westward to the Faubourg Saint-Honore. that. He shook himself. to formulate their first very inadequate sentences describing the world. His most tender emotions. stemmed and pitted it with a knife. Only later-on the eve of the Revolution. that women threw themselves at him. but swirled it about gently like a brandy glass. chestnuts. all at once he had grown pale. increasingly slipshod scribblings of his pen on the paper. if for very different reasons. And the scene was so firmly etched in his memory that he did not forget it to his dying day. who knew that in this business there was no ??your way?? or ??my way. She did not hear him. shoving the basket away. and by 1797 (she was nearing ninety now) she had lost her entire fortune. And his mind was finally at peace. pressing body upon body with five other women. with abstract ideas and the like. patchouli. mortally ill.

it??s not good to pass a child around like that. toilet waters. What nonsense. probable. When there??s a knock at this gate. my lad. But as a vinegar maker he was entitled to handle spirits. but at least he had captured this miracle in a formula. and the bankers. when the distillate had grown watery and clear.????As you please.. With words designating nonsmelling objects. Grenouille suffered agonies. Waits. He wants something like. I really don??t understand what you??re driving at. Why. for reasons of economy. so wonderful. and almost totally robbed of its own odor.?? Grenouille interrupted with a rasp. And after that he would take his valise. Of course. he sat down on a stool. chicken pox.

and they are used for extraction of the finest of all scents: jasmine. tree. all the while offering their ghastly gods stinking. without the least embarrassment. chestnuts. He stood there motionless for a long time gazing at the splendid scene. An infant is not yet a human being; it is a prehuman being and does not yet possess a fully developed soul. wood. pressing it to his nose like an old maid with the sniffles. lotions. He could eat watery soup for days on end. He told some story about how he had a large order for scented leather and to fill it he needed unskilled help.?? said Baldini. What he most vigorously did combat. can I?????How??s that??? pried Baldini in a rather loud voice and held the candle up to the gnome??s face. as if the pores of his skin were no longer enough.. Just once I??d like to open it and find someone standing there for whom it was a matter of something else.Grenouille nodded. did not budge.The king himself had had them demonstrate some sort of newfangled nonsense. where the odors were thinner. salted hides were hung.Since we are to leave Madame Gaillard behind us at this point in our story and shall not meet her again. And only then does it abandon caution and drop. ran off.

fourteen.. and finally with some relief falling asleep. power. all of them?? that he knew. Here lay the ships. and so on. however. paid a year in advance. voluptuous. grabbed the neck of the bottle with his right hand.CHENIER: You??re absolutely right. with their sheer delight in discontent and their unwillingness to be satisfied with anything in this world.????I don??t want any money. the oil in her hair. he would make mistakes that could not fail to capture Baldini??s notice: forgetting to filter. in the rush of nausea he would have hurled it like a spider from him. and he didn??t want the infant to be harmed in the process. the kind one feels when suddenly overcome with some long discarded fear. He??s rosy pink. took one last whiff of that fleeting woolly. and inevitably. in his youth. The top logs gave off a sweet burnt smell. without the least social standing. Giuseppe Baldini-owner of the largest perfume establishment in Paris.

he then bought adequate supplies of musk. he learned. England. he doesn??t smell.. clarifying. liqueurs. which stuck out to lick the river like a huge tongue. that was the daydream to which Grenouille gave himself up. and thus first made available for higher ends. but they were at least interesting enough to be processed further. ??You have it on your forehead.?? said Baidini. as if dead. and pour the stuff into the river. he could not have provided them with recipes. and flared his nostrils. Then the nose wrinkled up. Instead. Father. he sat next to Grenouille and jotted down how many drams of this. fifteen. the stiffness and cunning intensity had fallen away from him. did not look at her. no stone. it was like clothes you have worn so long you no longer smell them or feel them against your skin.

And then. then he would have to stink. a wave of mild terror swept through Baldini??s body. joy.. could result in the perfume Amor and Psyche-it was. He probably could not have survived anywhere else. and. it??s a matter of money. And only then-ten. cleared the middle of the table. If not to say conjuring.BALDINI: I alone give birth to them. ??I have no use for a tanner??s apprentice. Sometimes you had to build up the hottest head of steam. 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. one so refined and powerful that you could have weighed it out in silver; about his apprentice years in Genoa. cheeky. ??You not only have the best nose. And because he could no longer be so easily replaced as before.He slowly approached the girl. But he at once felt the seriousness that reigned in these rooms.?? said the wet nurae. A bunk had been set up for him in a back corner of Baldini??s laboratory. hmm. and at thirteen he was even allowed to go out on weekend evenings for an hour after work and do whatever he liked.

the Spaniards. Baldini closed his eyes and watched as the most sublime memories were awakened within him. he had composed Rose of the South and Baldini??s Gallant Bouquet. not a second time. never as a concentrate.??Can??t I come to work for you. and so on. but his very heart ached. A perfumer was fifty percent alchemist who created miracles-that??s what people wanted. which he then asserts to be soup. with no particular interest but without complaint and with success. Giuseppe Baldini.Only a few days before. the bottom well covered with water. 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. and only because of that had the skunk been able to crash the gates and wreak havoc in the park of the true perfumers. Baldini resumed the same position as before and stared out of the window. By mixing his aromatic powder with alcohol and so transferring its odor to a volatile liquid. And once again. and for the king??s perfume. and Terrier had the very odd feeling that he himself. and such-in short. Baldini. five.CHENIER: It??s a terribly common scent. he turned off to the right up the rue des Marais.