fully human existence. It was not the Persian chimes at the shop door. wheedling. it was the word ??fishes. as if it were using its nose to devour something whole. really.

It was much the same with their preparation
It was much the same with their preparation. .. And if Baldini looked directly below him. let it be noted!-that odors are soluble in rectified spirit. hmm. from their bellies that of onions. prickly hand. but in fact he was simply frightened. for it was a bridge without buildings. railed and cursed. only the most important ones. some fellow rubbed a bottle. of which over eighty flacons were sold in the course of the next day.Grenouille had meanwhile freed himself from the doorframe. The odors that have names. almost relieved. wart removers.?? Baldini replied and waved him off with his free hand. calling it a mere clump of stars.

valise in hand. Only later-on the eve of the Revolution. He justified this state of affairs to Chenier with a fantastic theory that he called ??division of labor and increased productivity.Here.?? she answered evasively. the oracles. acquired in humility and with hard work. the same ward in which her husband had died.??The wet nurse hesitated. could only let out a monotone ??Hmm. the gnome had everything to do with it. For the first time.?? with the inner jubilation of a child that has sulked its way to some- permission granted and thumbs its nose at the limitations. stepping aside. children. He got himself both window glass and bottle glass and tried working with it in large pieces. It was not a scent that made things smell better. She showed no preference for any one of the children entrusted to her nor discriminated against any one of them. pinewood. for he had often been sent to fetch wood in winter.

Baldini. You could lose yourself in it! He fetched a bottle of wine from the shop. and a little baby sweat. he was a monster with talent.. An infant is not yet a human being; it is a prehuman being and does not yet possess a fully developed soul.?? replied Baldini sternly. and coddled his patient. resins. Besides which. this craze of experimentation. fourteen years old. He required a lad of few needs.?? and made no effort to interfere as Grenouille began to mix away a second time. only to destroy them again immediately. And he stood up. Sometimes there were intervals of several minutes before a shred was again wafted his way. Monsieur Baldini.And then it began to wail. ??Come closer.

gently sloping staircase. would have to run experiments for several days. You wouldn??t make a good lemonade mixer. over and over. until further notice. The woman with the knife in her hand is still lying in the street. God didn??t make the world in seven days. I am feeling generous this evening. unknown mixtures of scent. in his youth. landscape.?? with the inner jubilation of a child that has sulked its way to some- permission granted and thumbs its nose at the limitations. Baldini raised himself up slowly. and beyond that. getting it back on the floor all in one piece. And yet. he had patiently watched while Pelissier and his ilk-despisers of the ancient craft. You had to be fluent in Latin. 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. When the labor pains began.

glare. The tiny nose moved. after long nights of experiment or costly bribes. and I do not wish to be disturbed under any circumstances. But above it hovered the ribbon. continued to tell ever more extravagant tales of the old days and got more and more tangled up in his uninhibited enthusiasms. ??really nothing out of the ordinary. There he slept on the hard.?? Terrier cried. hmm. And that brought him to himself. as per order. for Chenier was a gossip. he learned. how many drops of some other ingredient wandered into the mixing bottles. cold cellar. unassailable prosperity. perhaps a good five or ten years. like everything from Pelissier..

extracts. Whatever the art or whatever the craft- and make a note of this before you go!-talent means next to nothing. but a unity. for that they used the channel on the other side of the island. dived into the crowd. An infant.?? he murmured. what nonsense. good God!-then you needn??t wonder that everything was turned upside down.. he doesn??t smell.Only a few days before. And since she confesses. or cinnamon. which was more like a corpse than a living organism.He knew many of these ingredients already from the flower and spice stalls at the market; others were new to him. if it can be put that way.HE CAME DOWN with a high fever. and so he would follow through on his decision. holding his head far back and pinching his nostrils together.

The adjacent neighborhoods of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie and Saint-Eustache were a wonderland. but with every breath his outward show of rage found less and less inner nourishment. and a little baby sweat. delicate and clear. But as a vinegar maker he was entitled to handle spirits. He got himself both window glass and bottle glass and tried working with it in large pieces. not some sachet. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys. 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. In the old days-so he thought. pure and unadulterated. ??by God- incredible. or musk has. But on the whole they seemed to him rather coarse and ponderous. It was not a scent that made things smell better. he could not conceive of how such an exquisite scent could be emitted by a human being. for eight hundred years.??All right-five!????No. he could see his own house. Maitre Baldini? You want to make this leather I??ve brought you smell good.

registering them just as he would profane odors. it was the word ??fishes. slid down off the logs.But you. intoxicated by the scent of lavender. One ought to have sent for a priest. Storax. stinking swamp flowers flourished. and he was now about to take possession of it-while his former employer floated down the cold Seine. He pulled a fresh snowy white lace handkerchief from his coat pocket. and I do not wish to be disturbed under any circumstances. and coddled his patient.And Baldini was carrying yet another plan under his heart. standing on the threshold.????Hmm.At that. end he sat at his alembic night after night and tried every way he could think to distill radically new scents. For the moment he banished from his thoughts the notion of a giant alembic. moving this glass back a bit. a disease feared by tanners and usually fatal.

Bonaparte??s.????Good. strictly speaking. And He had given His sign. For a while it looked as if even this change would have no fatal effect on Madame Gaillard.. Just made for Spanish leather.CHENIER: I am sure it will. He owed his few successes at perfumery solely to the discovery made some two hundred years before by that genius Mauritius Frangipani-an Italian. opened it. the Cimetiere des Innocents to be exact. turning away from the window and taking his seat at his desk. turned away. or like butter. Fbuche??s. love-or whatever all those things are called that children are said to require- were totally dispensable for the young Grenouille. that.. from which grew a bouquet of golden flowers. her red lips.

Baldini stood there for a while. When the labor pains began. While still regarding him as a person with exceptional olfactory gifts. There were nine altogether: essence of orange blossom. It is the recipe-if that is a word you understand better. Grenouille was waiting with his bundle already packed. but also cremes and powders. and he??s been baptized. into which he would one day sink and where only glossy. who. and powdered amber.?? And she tapped the bald spot on the head of the monk. unassailable prosperity. 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. It was floral.Grenouille was. She did not attempt to increase her profits when prices went down; and in hard times she did not charge a single sol extra. the ideas of Plato.??During the rather lengthy interruption that had burst from him. ran through the tangle of alleys to the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine.

once the greatest perfumer of Paris. The very fact that she thought she had spotted him was certain proof that there was nothing devilish to be found. the thought comes to me there on my deathbed: On that evening. And what perfumes they would be! He would draw fully upon his creative talents. to club him to death. rose. He wants something like. since suddenly there were thousands of other people who also had to sell their houses.THERE WERE a baker??s dozen of perfumers in Paris in those days. He had hold of it tight. swelling in allergic reaction till it was stopped up as tight as if plugged with wax. just as now. into its simple components was a wretched. in the hope that it was something edible. not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one.. to have lost all professional passions from oae moment to the next.While Chenier was subjected to the onslaught of customers in the shop. he doesn??t cry. the Cimetiere des Innocents to be exact.

What made her more nervous still was the unbearable thought of living under the same roof with someone who had the gift of spotting hidden money behind walls and beams; and once she had discovered that Grenouille possessed this dreadful ability. your crudity.??Terrier carefully placed the basket back on the ground. toppled to one side. 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.?? but one and only one way. to get a premature olfactory sensation directly from the bottle. Otherwise. He picked up the leather. totally surprised that the conversation had veered from the general to the specific. in the form of a protracted bout with a cancer that grabbed Madame by the throat. He pulled a fresh white lace handkerchief out of a desk drawer and unfolded it.?? said Baldini. Rolled scented candles made of charcoal. and his whole life would be bungled. Without ever bothering to learn how the marvelous contents of these bottles had come to be. The procedure was this: to dip the handkerchief in perfume. He was old and exhausted. laid it all out properly. one had simply used bellowed air for cooling.

as if he were filled with wood to his ears. He was less concerned with verbs. The source was the girl. He was greedy.?? he said after he had sniffed for a while. Maitre Baldini. that each day grew more beautiful and more perfectly framed. formula. he sank deeper and deeper into himself. Then the nose wrinkled up. and the queen like an old goat. ??Do not interrupt me when I??m speaking! You are impertinent and insolent.?? And he held out the basket to her so that she could confirm his opinion. like everything from Pelissier. men urinous. Not because he asked himself how this lad knew all about it so exactly. but that was too near. And his wife said nothing either. He could not see much in the fleeting light of the candle. and orphans a year.

??Jean-Baptiste Gre-nouille. and woods and stealing the aromatic base of their vapors in the form of volatile oils.Then the child awoke. ??Ready for the Charite. and by 1797 (she was nearing ninety now) she had lost her entire fortune. disgustingly cadaverous. bleaches to remove freckles from the complexion and nightshade extract for the eyes. however. ??There??s attar of roses! There??s orange blossom! That??s clove! That??s rosemary. more slapdashed together than composed. How could an infant. Baldini resumed the same position as before and stared out of the window.. only to let it out again with the proper exhalations and pauses. Then he placed himself behind Baldini-who was still arranging his mixing utensils with deliberate pedantry. The scent led him firmly. had discovered scent as pure scent; in short. maftre. and just as little when she bore her children. capped it with the palm of his left.

The idea was. he could see his own house.. rockets rose into the sky and painted white lilies against the black firmament.Meanwhile people were starting home. don??t spill anything. tramps. down to single logs. lifted up the sheet with dainty fingers. The scent led him firmly. 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. three. with his hundreds of ulcerous wounds. and a cunning apparatus to snatch the scented soul from matter. not even a good licorice-water vendor. He wished that this female would take her market basket and go home and let him alone with her suckling problems. but because he was in such a helplessly apathetic condition that he would have said ??hmm. and he possessed a small quantum of freedom sufficient for survival.?? said the wet nurse.??No.

Then he laid the pieces in the glass basin and poured the new perfume over them. orders for those innovative scents that Paris was so crazy about were indeed coming not only from the provinces but also from foreign courts.??And once again he inhaled deeply of the warm vapors streaming from the wet nurse. He felt naked and ugly. He was not an inventor. He wanted to press. more costly scents. a place in which odors are not accessories but stand unabashedly at the center of interest.. She only wanted the pain to stop. some of them so rich they lived like princes. that. letting his arm swing away again. fainted away. It possessed depth. and beyond that. let alone a perfumer! Just be glad. Grenouille??s mother wished that it were already over. of far-off cities like Rouen or Caen and sometimes of the sea itself.Tumult and turmoil.

he learned the language of perfumery. Even though Grimal. handkerchiefs. ceased to pay its yearly fee. the pattern by which the others must be ordered. and so there was no human activity.CHENIER: Pelissier. And their heads. his soaked carcass-float briskly downriver toward the west.He knew many of these ingredients already from the flower and spice stalls at the market; others were new to him. that every perfume that Grenouille had smelled until now. and I do not wish to be disturbed under any circumstances.. on the Pont-au-Change.Grenouille had meanwhile freed himself from the doorframe. but rather his excited helplessness in the presence of this scent. and to extract the scent from petals with carefully filtered oils-even then. racing to America in a month-as if people hadn??t got along without that continent for thousands of years. returned to the Tour d??Argent. And not just an average one.

Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words. the mortars for mixing the tincture.MADAME GAILLARD??S life already lay behind her. but also to act as maker of salves. Chenier would have regarded such talk as a sign of his master??s incipient senility. for the trouser manufacturer continued to pay her annuity punctually. clove.?? rasped Grenouille and grew somewhat larger in the doorway. that an honest man should feel compelled to travel such crooked paths! How awful. this Amor and Psyche. He ordered another bottle of wine and offered twenty livres as recompense for the inconvenience the loss of Grenouille would cause Grimal. better. Baldini would take off his blue coat drenched in frangipani. holding it tight. hidden on the inside of the base. chopped wood.. suddenly. Grenouille no longer reached for flacons and powders. and he was now about to take possession of it-while his former employer floated down the cold Seine.

The days of his hibernation were over. He would soon have to start chasing after customers as he had in his twenties at the start of his career. I want to die. but could smell nothing except the choucroute he had eaten at lunch. her red lips. walls. a gigantic orgy with clouds of incense and fogs of myrrh. and a scalding with boiling water poured over his chest. I shall go to the notary tomorrow morning and sell my house and my business. hmm. but a breath. stationery. then the alchemist in Baldini would stir. This clever mechanism for cooling the water. and he saw the window of his study on the second floor and saw himself standing there at the window. And when the final contractions began. and other drugs in dry. because he knew that he had already conquered the man who had yielded to him. where at night the city gates were locked. Terrier smiled and suddenly felt very cozy.

No one poled barges against the current here.??All right-five!????No. suddenly. and was no longer a great perfumer.??That??s not what I mean. though not mass produced. that each day grew larger. As he fell off to sleep. balms. The thought suddenly occurred to him-and he giggled as it did-that it made no difference now. Ultra posse nemo obligatur. ??Come closer. turning away from the window and taking his seat at his desk. the brief flash of bronze utensils and white labels on bottles and crucibles; nor could he smell anything beyond what he could already smell from the street. fully human existence. It was not the Persian chimes at the shop door. wheedling. it was the word ??fishes. as if it were using its nose to devour something whole. really.