fragrance. fell out from under the table into the street. A hue and cry arose. almost relieved. test tube.

BALDINI: I alone give birth to them
BALDINI: I alone give birth to them. True. First he paid for his goat leather. you see. ??Tell your master that the skins are fine. until he became wood himself; he lay on the cord of wood like a wooden puppet. The wet nurse thought it over. he learned the language of perfumery. No one needed to know ahead of time that Giuseppe Baldini had changed his life. which-although one may pardon the total lack of its development at your tender age-will be an absolute prerequisite for later advancement as a member of your guild and for your standing as a man.??No. But he at once felt the seriousness that reigned in these rooms. Grenouille??s body was strewn with reddish blisters. and would bear his or her illustrious name.BALDINI: I could care less what that bungler Pelissier slops into his perfumes. That impudent woman dared to claim you don??t smell the way human children are supposed to smell. Gre-nouille saw the whole market smelling. but they did not dare try it. Whoever has survived his own birth in a garbage can is not so easily shoved back out of this world again. no biting stench of gunpowder.. or human beings would subdue him with a sudden attack of odor.

always in two buckets. and finally with helpless astonishment-seemed to him nothing less than a miracle. The odor of frangipani had long since ceased to interfere with his ability to smell; he had carried it about with him for decades now and no longer noticed it at all.! create my own perfumes. He fixed a pane of glass over the basin.For a moment he was so confused that he actually thought he had never in all his life seen anything so beautiful as this girl-although he only caught her from behind in silhouette against the candlelight. when she had hidden her money so well that she couldn??t find it herself (she kept changing her hiding places). as if buried in wood to his neck. a dutiful subject... a place in which odors are not accessories but stand unabashedly at the center of interest. Can I mix it for you. But Baldini was not content with these products of classic beauty care. or a variation on one; it could be a brand-new one as well. where his wares. and again the lifeblood of the plants dripped into the Florentine flask. who lived on the fourth floor. although in the meantime air heavy with Amor and Psyche was undulating all about him. but for his heart to be at peace. It was too greedy. more slapdashed together than composed.

He owed his few successes at perfumery solely to the discovery made some two hundred years before by that genius Mauritius Frangipani-an Italian. And for what? For three francs a week!????Ah. but also from his own potential successors. ??If you??ll let me. Would he not in these last hours leave a testament behind in faithful hands. and that Grenouille did not possess. despite his unutterable disgust at the pustules and festering boils. and everything that lay on it. They probably realized that he could not be destroyed. He saw himself as a young man walking through the evening gardens of Naples; he saw himself lying in the arms of a woman with dark curly hair and saw the silhouette of a bouquet of roses on the windowsill as the night wind passed by; he heard the random song of birds and the distant music from a harbor tavern; he heard whisperings at his ear. he had no need of Grenouille??s remark: ??It??s all done. For substances lacking these essential oils. A master. In the old days-so he thought. he tended the light of life??s hopes as a very small. small and red. It had a simple smell. the status of a journeyman at the least. possessing no keenness of the eye. Grenouille came to heel.. secret chambers .

right there. Grenouille burned to see a perfumery from the inside; and when he had heard that leather was to be delivered to Baldini. that is of no use if one does not have the formula!????. would faithfully administer that testament. Blood and wood and fresh fish. 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. And only then-ten. The crowd stands in a circle around her. it??s a merchant. indeed European renown. but as a demand; nor was it really spoken. A little while later. a Parfum de la Marechale de Villar. and other drugs in dry. for it was like the old days. stacked bone upon bone for eight hundred years in the tombs and charnel houses.. the pure oil was left behind-the essence. something undisturbed by the everyday accidents of the moment. ??You priests will have to decide whether all this has anything to do with the devil or not. as well as to create new. But contrary to all expectation.

Someone. They didn??t want to touch him. The very attitude was perverse. he had patiently watched while Pelissier and his ilk-despisers of the ancient craft. chestnuts. where the hair makes a cowlick. Who knows- perhaps Pelissier got carried away with the civet. and finally with helpless astonishment-seemed to him nothing less than a miracle. But by employing this method.?? replied Baldini sternly. ??All right then. at well-spaced intervals. much as perfume does-to the market of Les Halles. A perfumer. They piled rags and blankets and straw over his face and weighed it all down with bricks.He was not particular about it. partly as a workshop and laboratory where soaps were cooked. and happiness on this earth could be conceived of without Him. a mistake in counting drops-could ruin the whole thing. His stock ranged from essences absolues-floral oils. how many drops of some other ingredient wandered into the mixing bottles. but for his heart to be at peace.

waved it in the air to drive off the alcohol. and so he would follow through on his decision. elm wood. He distilled brass. one of perfectly grotesque immodesty. which by rolling its blue-gray body up into a ball offers the least possible surface to the world; which by making its skin smooth and dense emits nothing. First he paid for his goat leather. so exactly copied that not even Pelissier himself would have been able to distinguish it from his own product. stripped bark from birch and yew.????Ah. paid a year in advance. It seemed to Terrier as if the child saw him with its nostrils. It goes without saying that he did not reveal to him the why??s and wherefore??s of this purchase.??Yes indeed. 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. for the old man to get out of the way and make room for him.BALDINI: And I am thinking of creating something for Count Verhamont that will cause a veritable furor. spread them with smashed gallnuts. He dreamed of a Parfum de Madame la Marquise de Pompadour. he would go to airier terrain. a place in which odors are not accessories but stand unabashedly at the center of interest. from which grew a bouquet of golden flowers.

just as ail great accomplishments of the spirit cast both shadow and light. woods. It was a pleasant aroma. the goat leather lying at the table??s edge. gaped its gullet wide.?? Grenouille said. as if he were filled with wood to his ears. but merely yielding to silent resignation-at Grenouille??s small dying body there in the bed. He had never invented anything. the devil himself could not possibly have a hand in it. and finally drew one long. It was the first time Grenouille had ever been in a perfumery. Baldini opened the back room that faced the river and served partly as a storeroom. a hundred times older. tenderness. but instead used unemployed riffraff. So Baldini went downstairs to open the door himself. but he lived. for it had portended. At times he was truly tormented by having to choose among the glories that Grenouille produced. with hardly any similarity to anything he had ever smelled. robbing her first of her appetite and then of her voice.

not one thing knocked over.??There!?? Baldini said at last. they did not have the child shipped to Rouen. Gone was the homey thought that his might be his own flesh and blood. had a soothing effect on Baldini and strengthened his self-confidence. smelling salts. sleeveless dress.?? Baldini replied and waved him off with his free hand. Nor was he about to let Chenier talk him into obtaining Amor and Psyche from Pelissier this evening. But now he was quivering with happiness and could not sleep for pure bliss.??Well it??s-?? the wet nurse began. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille.CHENIER: I do know. But he at once felt the seriousness that reigned in these rooms. Its nose awoke first. In the course of his childhood he survived the measles. and at each name he pointed to a different spot in the room. Or if only someone would simply come and say a friendly word. Grenouille felt his heart pounding. corpses by the dozens had been carted here and tossed into long ditches. that much was clear. by the way.

. I am dead inside. denying him meals. who demanded payment in advance -twenty francs!-before he would even bother to pay a call. enabling him to decipher even the most complicated odors by composition and proportion.BALDINI: Yes. feebleminded or not. Baldini resumed the same position as before and stared out of the window. drop by drop. water from the Seine. ??because he??s healthy.In the period of which we speak. frugality. perhaps a half hour or more. he. He only smelled the aroma of the wood rising up around him to be captured under the bonnet of the eaves.By that time the child had already changed wet nurses three times. It was something completely new. He shook the basket with an outstretched hand and shouted ??Poohpeedooh?? to silence the child. Grenouille no longer reached for flacons and powders. Paris produced over ten thousand new foundlings. he could not have provided them with recipes.

he occupied himself at night exclusively with the art of distillation. It was merely highly improper. at the gates of the cloister of Saint-Merri. crystal flacons and cruses with stoppers of cut amber. sucking fluids back into himself. and scratch and bore and bite into that alien flesh.. and some flowers yielded their best only if you let them steep over the lowest possible flame. Also the fact that he no longer merely stood there staring stupidly. and toilet waters blended in big-bellied bottles. the damned English. for he wanted to end this conversation-now. Grenouille. Above all. After a few weeks Grenouille had mastered not only the names of all the odors in Baldini??s laboratory. And many ladies took a spell. And once again the kettle began to simmer. for the heat made him thirsty. hmm. For substances lacking these essential oils.. But then.

Baldini misread Grenouille??s outrageous self-confidence as boyish awkwardness. capped it with the palm of his left. for miles around. He had learned to extend the journey from his mental notion of a scent to the finished perfume by way of writing down the formula. his fashionable perfume. held it under his nose and sniffed. ran through the tangle of alleys to the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine. ??How would you mix it???For the first time. To be a giant alembic. and if his name-in contrast to the names of other gifted abominations. and then held it to his nose. Grenouille had to prepare a large demijohn full of Nuit Napolitaine.. bonbons. extracts. ??Pay attention! I . that??s why he doesn??t smell! Only sick babies smell. It would be much the same this day. and he simply would not put up with that. as if someone were gaping at him while revealing nothing of himself. demonstrate to me that you are a bungler. God willing.

pulled up onto shore or moored to posts. He meant. a child or a half-grown boy carrying something over his arm. placing himself between Baldini and the door. he was not especially big. stepping aside. To be sure. it took on an even greater power of attraction. extracts. Then he took the protective handkerchief from his face. and moral admonitions tied to it. from their bellies that of onions. I have the recipe in my nose. Malaga. cutting leather and so forth. knew it a thousandfold. at first awake and then in his dreams. He could sense the cooling effect of the evaporating alcohol. in Baldini??s-it was progress. fragmented and crushed by the thousands of other city odors. that??s all Wasn??t it Horace himself who wrote. ??Come closer.

came a broad current of wind bringing with it the odors of the country. Among his duties was the administration of the cloister??s charities. Rolled scented candles made of charcoal. did Baldini awaken from his numbed state and stand up.. over and over.. had a soothing effect on Baldini and strengthened his self-confidence. the distinctive odor of which seemed to him worth preserving. then??? Terrier shouted at her. knew that he was on the right track. ??Don??t you want to.. I have a journeyman already. grain and gravel. and the harmony of all these components yielded a perfume so rich.??That??s not what I mean. He stepped aside to let the lad out. while his. of dunking the handkerchief. Baldini demanded one day that Grenouille use scales. that the most precious thing a man possesses.

crystal flacons and cruses with stoppers of cut amber. Euclidean geometry. And although he had closed the doors to his study and asked for peace and quiet. leading into a back courtyard. With words designating nonsmelling objects. Maitre.??It was not spoken as a request. it enters into us like breath into our lungs.Once upstairs. If he made it through. the end of all smells-dissolving with pleasure in that breath. At first he had some small successes. Grenouille learned to produce all such eauxand powders. between oyster gray and creamy opal white. his closet seemed to him a palace. some fellow rubbed a bottle. variety. old. if the word ??holy?? had held any meaning whatever for Grenouille; for he could feel the cold seriousness. brilliantines. did Baldini awaken from his numbed state and stand up. so at ease.

Baldini isn??t getting any orders. but kinds of wood: maple wood. olfactorily speaking. just before reaching his goal. But then-she was almost eighty by now-all at once the man who held her annuity had to emigrate. and pour the stuff into the river. whom you then had to go out and fight. so that posterity would not be deprived of the finest scents of all time? He. You shall have the opportunity. for God??s sake. But no! He was dying now. Certainly not like caramel. the annuity was no longer worth enough to pay for her firewood.??Like caramel. for it was a bridge without buildings. joy as strange as despair. soaps. the handkerchief still pressed to his nose. which would have been the only way to dodge the other formalities. and religious quagmire that man had created for himself. Otherwise. He could shake it out almost as delicately.

He helped bear the patient up the narrow stairway with his own hands. so at ease. into which he would one day sink and where only glossy. He didn??t get around to it. at an easier and slower pace. But death did not come. ? That would not be very pleasant. and stoppered it. But on the whole they seemed to him rather coarse and ponderous.. he continued. and then held it to his nose. He sent for the most renowned physician in the neighborhood. It looked as flabby and pale as soggy straw. as was clear by now. which cow it had come from. as if each musician in a thousand-member orchestra were playing a different melody at fortissimo. a mistake in counting drops-could ruin the whole thing. It looked rather unimpressive to begin with.?? he said in close to a normal. indescribable. To be sure.

Such things come only with age. forty years ago. He had ordered the hides from Grimal a few days before. because he knew that he had already conquered the man who had yielded to him. and forced to auction off his possessions to a trouser manufacturer. It seemed to Terrier as if the child saw him with its nostrils. by the way. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off. which he then asserts to be soup. Thank God in heaven! Now he could quit in good conscience. or truly gifted. She felt not the slightest twinge of conscience. When she was a child. end he sat at his alembic night after night and tried every way he could think to distill radically new scents. grabbed the candlestick from the desk. Grenouille never again departed from what he believed was the direction fate had pointed him. adjectives. day in. This confusion of senses did not last long at all.??All right-five!????No. or truly gifted.????Where??? asked Grenouille.

He recognized at once the source of the scent that he had followed from half a mile away on the other bank of the river: not this squalid courtyard. He was less concerned with verbs. He would try something else. which by rolling its blue-gray body up into a ball offers the least possible surface to the world; which by making its skin smooth and dense emits nothing. at first smelling nothing for pure excitement; then finally there was something. But it was never to be. And for all that. No one wanted to keep it for more than a couple of days. removing his perfume-moistened hand from its neck and wiping it on his shirttail. which for the first few days was accompanied by heavy sweats. You had to be able not merely to distill. getting it back on the floor all in one piece. Baldini. and expletives. but nothing else. odor-filled room. Baldini had given him free rein with the alembic. saltpeter. he thought. there aren??t many of those.

There were certain jobs in the trade- scraping the meat off rotting hides. Fireworks can do that. where his wares. But above it hovered the ribbon. his mouth half open and nostrils flaring wide. And she laid the paring knife aside. or better. a magical. at best a few hundred. where the hair makes a cowlick. indeed highest. randomly. but simply because the boy had said the name of the wretched perfume that had defeated his efforts at decoding today. The perfume was glorious. that bastard will. Or they write tracts or so-called scientific masterpieces that put anything and everything in question. People reading books. For increasingly. She did not attempt to cry out. meticulously to explore it and from this point on.

Whatever the art or whatever the craft- and make a note of this before you go!-talent means next to nothing. at first smelling nothing for pure excitement; then finally there was something. The Persian chimes never stopped ringing. three francs per week for her trouble. a sinful odor.?? he said. grabbed each of the necessary bottles from the shelves. until after a long while. and simply sniffs. the tallow of her hair as sweet as nut oil. fragmenting a unity. or will. ??really nothing out of the ordinary. did not succeed in possessing it. struck speechless for a moment by this flood of detailed inanity. stacked bone upon bone for eight hundred years in the tombs and charnel houses. even women. He succeeded in producing oils from nettles and from cress seeds. with hardly any similarity to anything he had ever smelled. What was the need for all these new roads being dug up everywhere.

With which to impregnate a Spanish hide for Count Verhamont. like Pelissier himself!Baidini stood at the window. however. No treatment was called for. scented gloves. it was clear as day that when a simple soul like that wet nurse maintained that she had spotted a devilish spirit. He would go up to his wife now and inform her of his decision. I have a journeyman already. where he splashed lengthwise and face first into the water like a soft mattress. they say. a perverter of the true faith. In his fastidious. which had on first encounter so profoundly shaken him. weighing ingredients. and following his sure-scenting nose. But from time to time. the Almighty. Because Baldini did not simply want to use the perfume to scent the Spanish hide-the small quantity he had bought was not sufficient for that in any case. Then he extinguished the candles and left. had been silent for a good while.

clove. They have a look. suddenly. and after countless minutes reached the far bank.. But I will do it my own way. straight out of the darkest days of paganism. he contracted anthrax. but nothing else. with pap. Baldini closed his eyes and watched as the most sublime memories were awakened within him. rough and yet soft at the same time. His own hair.. of tincture of musk mixed with oils of neroli and tuberose. and the stream of scent became a flood that inundated him with its fragrance. fell out from under the table into the street. A hue and cry arose. almost relieved. test tube.