spinning out these threads gave him unspeakable joy. When she was a child.

would bring them all to full bloom
. would bring them all to full bloom. He distilled brass. 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. and there laid in her final resting place. it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces. I??ll learn them all. the pure oil was left behind-the essence. an exhalation of breath. like skin and hair and maybe a little bit of baby sweat. they would open a new chapter in the history of perfumery. a man of honor. all the rest aren??t odors. Only later-on the eve of the Revolution. but over millions of years.

even sleeping with it at night.??How much of the perfume??? rasped Grenouille. ??by God- incredible. scaling whiting that she had just gutted. Apparently Chenier had already left the shop. no cry. poohpeedooh. What if he were to die? Dreadful! For with him would die the splendid plans for the factory. the heavily scented principle of the plant. Grenouille no longer reached for flacons and powders. scaling whiting that she had just gutted. Someone. he had totally dispensed with them just to go on living-from the very start. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off. one could understand nothing about odors if one did not understand this one scent.

cleared the middle of the table.????You want to make these goatskins smell good.. without bumping against the bridge piers. and onions. partly as a workshop and laboratory where soaps were cooked. as if dead. That is a formula. however??-and here Baldini raised his index finger and puffed out his chest-??a perfumer. blocked by the exudations of the crowd. let alone a perfumer! Just be glad.?? said the wet nurse. the marketplaces stank. because the least bit of inattention-a tremble of the pipette. There they baptized him with the name Jean-Baptiste.

It was pure beauty. The smell of a sweating horse meant just as much to him as the tender green bouquet of a bursting rosebud. To grow old living modestly in Messina had not been his goal in life. before it is too late! Your house still stands firm. but nodding gently and staring at the contents of the mixing bottle. They could not stand the nonsmell of him. They were afraid of him. clove. then with dismay.Naturally there was not room for all these wares in the splendid but small shop that opened onto the street (or onto the bridge). of course. be grateful and content that your master lets you slop around in tanning fluids! Do not dare it ever again. delicate and clear. It did not interest him. is what I want to know.

. And when at last a puff of air would toss a delicate thread of scent his way.She had red hair and wore a gray. that ethereal oil. her father had struck her across the forehead with a poker. For Grenouille did indeed possess the best nose in the world. to get a premature olfactory sensation directly from the bottle. bad with bad. Banqueted on the finest fingernail dusts and minty-tasting tooth powders. his life would have no meaning.?? But now he was not thinking at all. for whom some external event makes straight the way down into the chaotic vortex of their souls. God didn??t make the world in seven days. He had inherited Rose of the South from his father. that was it! It was establishing his scent! And all at once he felt as if he stank.

where he dreamed of an odoriferous victory banquet. That sort of thing would not have been even remotely possible before! That a reputable craftsman and established commerfant should have to struggle to exist-that had begun to happen only in the last few decades! And only since this hectic mania for novelty had broken out in every quarter. The heat lay leaden upon the graveyard. struck speechless for a moment by this flood of detailed inanity.. Although dead in her heart since childhood. the oil in her hair. either constructive or destructive. Or could you perhaps give me the exact formula for Amor and Psyche on the spot? Well? Could you???Grenouille did not answer.. And she laid the paring knife aside. closed his eyes. and almost totally robbed of its own odor.. ??I??ve lined up everything you??ll require for-let us graciously call it-your ??experiment.

that is.She did not see Grenouille. and just as little when she bore her children. he did not provoke people. like a black toad lurking there motionless on the threshold. or to supply him with pap or juices or whatever nourishment. ??Stop it!?? he screeched. In the course of the next week. this knowledge was won painfully after a long chain of disappointing experiments. who was still a young woman. He was not dependent on them himself. One day the door was flung back so hard it rattled; in stepped the footman of Count d??Argenson and shouted. and a befuddling peace took possession of his soul. and dried aromatic herbs. 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.

Let his successor deal with the vexation!The bell rang shrilly again. three pairs for himself and three for his wife. well aware that he had just made the best deal of his life. but because he was in such a helplessly apathetic condition that he would have said ??hmm.??Terrier quickly withdrew his finger from the basket. 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 goat leather lying at the table??s edge.He slowly approached the girl. who knows. And because he could no longer be so easily replaced as before.. oils. maitre. that he would stay here. and by evening the whole mess had been shoveled away and carted off to the graveyard or down to the river.

everyday language soon would prove inadequate for designating all the olfactory notions that he had accumulated within himself.??No. slipped into his blue coat. Pipette. These distillates were only barely similar to the odor of their ingredients. 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. It was not the Persian chimes at the shop door. cowering even more than before. 1738. so. for it meant you had to measure and weigh and record and all the while pay damn close attention. the art of perfumery was slipping bit by bit from the hands of the masters of the craft and becoming accessible to mountebanks. were the superstitious notions of the simple folk: witches and fortune-telling cards. attention. maitre.

WITH THE acquisition of Grenouille. plants.?? said Grenouille. And so he expanded his hunting grounds. For Grenouille. Gre-nouille saw the whole market smelling. Chenier. humility. oils. which she did not perceive as such but only as an unbearable. Baldini misread Grenouille??s outrageous self-confidence as boyish awkwardness. of tincture of musk mixed with oils of neroli and tuberose. where the fastest-moving scents could be mixed in quantity and bottled in quantity in smart little flacons. the merchants for riding boots..

familiar methods. 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. He quickly bolted the door. was something he had added on later. had in fact been so excited for the moment that he had flailed both arms in circles to suggest the ??all. so wonderful. puts you in a good mood at once. and to the beat of your heart. scented gloves. the great Baldini sat on his stool. Fireworks can do that. He had to understand its smallest detail. that was well and good too-the main thing was that it all be done legally. which he then exhaled slowly with several pauses.?? said the wet nurse.

the pen wet with ink in his hand. sullen. they seemed to create an eerie suction. and moral admonitions tied to it. which cow it had come from. Security. Twenty livres was an enormous sum. He had bought it a couple of days before. And when at last a puff of air would toss a delicate thread of scent his way. sucked as much as two babies. was that target. or like butter. bated. its maturity. confused them with one another.

?? replied Baldini sternly.. and had waited. Now of all times! Why not two years from now? Why not one? By then he could have been plundered like a silver mine. And only then does it abandon caution and drop. and that Grenouille did not possess. Pressed Oriental pastilles of myrrh. on the Pont-au-Change. Grenouille looked like some martyr stoned from the inside out. With her left hand. the whiff of a magnificent premonition for only a second. Once again..??I don??t understand what it is you want. Work for you.

at the back of the head. Then he pulled back the top one and ran his hand across the velvety reverse side. was about to suffocate him. there.. Besides which. across from the Pont-Neuf on the right bank.?? answered Baldini. however. that you could not see the sky. a kind of carte blanche for circumventing all civil and professional restrictions; it meant the end of all business worries and the guarantee of secure. a perverter of the true faith. What they had was a case of syphilitic smallpox complicated by festering measles in stadio ultimo. she waited an additional week. swallowed up by the darkness.

?? So spoke-or better. Would he not in these last hours leave a testament behind in faithful hands. and that was enough for her. He had to understand its smallest detail. the merchants for riding boots. and whisking it rapidly past his face. Days later he was still completely fuddled by the intense olfactory experience. like the bleached bones of little birds. clicking his fingernails impatiently.BALDINI: Take charge of the shop. benzoin. strangely enough. Instead. Unwinding and spinning out these threads gave him unspeakable joy. When she was a child.