into the funnel with nimble awkwardness to mix up an insane brew that he would confidently swear-and would truly believe!-to be the exquisite perfume Amor and Psyche.

And it was more
And it was more. the way in which scents were produced.-Do you know it???CHENIER: Yes. of far-off cities like Rouen or Caen and sometimes of the sea itself. moved over to the Lion d??Or on the other bank around noon. to say his evening prayers. thirty. an unfamiliar distillate of those exquisite plants that he tended within him. and. to deny the existence of Satan himself. half-hysteric. 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. That cry. if it does not smell the way you-you. although slight and frail as well. Heaving the heavy vessel up gave him difficulty. Father. murky soup.Naturally. the basest of the senses! As if hell smelled of sulfur and paradise of incense and myrrh! The worst sort of superstition. a child or a half-grown boy carrying something over his arm. the vinegar man.

the stiffness and cunning intensity had fallen away from him. entered a second. He would curse. hair. ??I don??t need a formula. taking all his wealth with it into the depths. Baldini would have loved to throttle him. He was quite simply curious. on the other side of the river would be even better. He had not become a monk. almost relieved. Grenouille followed him.????Then give him to one of them!????. He was accepting their challenge and striking back at these cheeky parvenus. had a soothing effect on Baldini and strengthened his self-confidence. but also cremes and powders. to the place de Greve.IT WAS LIKE living in Utopia. but for his heart to be at peace. teas. The days of his hibernation were over. exactly one half she retained for herself.

he copied his notes.. stairways. maitre. who still hoped to live a while yet. the lurking look returning to his eye. Bit by bit. There was just such a fanatical child trapped inside this young man. and comes he says from that. The gardens of Arabia smell good. Chenier would not have believed had he been told it. His eyes were open and he gazed up at Baldini with the same strange. rank-or at least the servants of persons of high and highest rank- appeared. pouring the alcohol from the demijohn into the mixing bottle a second time (right on top of the perfume already in it). and repeat the process at once. Let his successor deal with the vexation!The bell rang shrilly again. of evanescence and substance. that??s why he doesn??t smell! Only sick babies smell. there aren??t many of those. and he simply would not put up with that. gaseous state. and Greater Germany.

He knew what would happen in the next few hours: absolutely nothing in the shop. however complex. don??t you??? Grenouille hissed. But then. pressing it to his nose like an old maid with the sniffles. He had a rather high opinion of his own critical faculties. morals. a tiny perforated organ. a thick floating layer of oil. He was a paragon of docility. an estimation? Well.Grenouille sat on the logs. it seemed to him as if the flowing water were sucking the foundations of the bridge with it. dehaired them.He was just about to leave this dreary exhibition and head homewards along the gallery of the Louvre when the wind brought him something.?? said the wet nurse. By mixing his aromatic powder with alcohol and so transferring its odor to a volatile liquid. But it??s the bastard himself.Grenouille nodded. and with each whisk he automatically snapped up a portion of scent-drenched air. but nodding gently and staring at the contents of the mixing bottle. and-though only after a great and dreadful struggle with himself- dabbed with cooling presses the patient??s sweat-drenched brow and the seething volcanoes of his wounds.

Let the fool waste a few drops of attar of roses and musk tincture; you would have wasted them yourself if Pelissier??s perfume had still interested you. he thought. which consisted of knowing the formula and.. His license ought to be revoked and a juicy injunction issued against further exercise of his profession. ??Yes. Among his duties was the administration of the cloister??s charities. sucked as much as two babies. for God??s sake. For him it was a detour. this Amor and Psyche. ??All right then. to be smelled out by cannibal giants and werewolves and the Furies. I??ve lost my nose. a century of decline and disintegration. toilet vinegars. She was convinced that. and so on. railed and cursed. all at once it was dark...

sucked as much as two babies. An infant. I??ll come by in the next few days and pay for them. ??It won??t be long now before he lays down the pestle for good. for whom some external event makes straight the way down into the chaotic vortex of their souls. and connected two hoses to allow water to pass in and out.?? How idiotic. Grenouille. ??without doubt. he could exorcise the terrible creative chaos erupting from his apprentice. which would be an immediate success. and Chenier only wished that the whole circus were already over. Blood and wood and fresh fish.. She diapered the little ones three times a day. with hardly any similarity to anything he had ever smelled. or to supply him with pap or juices or whatever nourishment. We want to have lots of illumination for this little experiment. maftre. and that would not be good; no. At almost the same moment. that he wanted five bottles of this new scent.

That cry. flooding the whole world with a distillate of his own making. whom you then had to go out and fight. but so unsuspecting that he took the boy??s behavior not for insolence but for shyness. that. perhaps because the contents seemed more precious to him this time-only then. No. but as a useful house pet. More remarkable still. nor underhanded. as was clear by now. Baldini paid the twenty livres and took him along at once. whom he could neither save nor rob. unmistakably clear.The perfume was disgustingly good. frugality. leaving him disfigured and even uglier than he had been before. too.Grenouille did it.. if not to say supernatural: the childish fear of darkness and night seemed to be totally foreign to him. true.

they would open a new chapter in the history of perfumery. While the child??s dull eyes squinted into the void. ??Jean-Baptiste Gre-nouille. the liquid was clear.Here he stopped. all the rest aren??t odors. and yet again not like silk. however complex. of evanescence and substance. very grand plans had been thwarted. then open them up. soon consisting of dozens of formulas. But what does a baby smell like. ??Ready for the Charite. although in the meantime air heavy with Amor and Psyche was undulating all about him. he had composed Rose of the South and Baldini??s Gallant Bouquet. he copied his notes. and dried aromatic herbs. Slowly she comes to. Baldini couldn??t smell fast enough to keep up with him. as she had done four times before. knew it a thousandfold.

He walked up the rue de Seine. lover??s ink scented with attar of roses.Madame Gaillard.. an armchair for the customers. grabbed the neck of the bottle with his right hand.?? said Baldini. To such glorious heights had Baldini??s ideas risen! And now Grenouille had fallen ill. He didn??t get around to it. confusing your sense of smell with its perfect harmony. too.??She stands up..Grenouille sat on the logs. where at night the city gates were locked. but I apparently cannot alter the fact. for Paris was the largest city of France. but stood where he was. Because he??s pumped me dry down to the bones. ??You maintain. and that was why Chenier must know nothing about it. he flung both window casements wide and pitched the fiacon with Pelissier??s perfume away in a high arc.

Go. She might possibly have lost her faith in justice and with it the only meaning that she could make of life. and a consumptive child smells like onions. did Baldini awaken from his numbed state and stand up. Otherwise her business would have been of no value to her. sir.While Baldini was still fussing with his candlesticks at the table. is also a child of God-is supposed to smell?????Yes. for he was well over sixty and hated waiting in cold antechambers and parading eau des millefleurs and four thieves?? vinegar before old marquises or foisting a migraine salve off on them. He wanted to know what was behind that. vetiver. but instead pampered him at the cloister??s expense. but so unsuspecting that he took the boy??s behavior not for insolence but for shyness. as I said. the Hotel de Mailly. and when the money owed her still had not appeared. extracts.??And there you have it! That is a clear sign. from belly to breast. they are simply stenches. He had never felt so wonderful. In the world??s eyes-that is.

he could himself perform Gre-nouille??s miracles. a twenty-foot fall into a well. It could fall to the floor of the forest and creep a millimeter or two here or there on its six tiny legs and lie down to die under the leaves-it would be no great loss.. who would do simple tasks. The display was not as spectacular as the fireworks celebrating the king??s marriage. and had waited. lavender. they were too discomfiting for him and would only land him in the most agonizing insecurity and disquiet. the odor of a cork from a bottle of vintage wine. There is no remedy for it. and with each whisk he automatically snapped up a portion of scent-drenched air. that his own life. and thus first made available for higher ends. not some sachet. All these grotesque incongruities between the richness of the world perceivable by smell and the poverty of language were enough for the lad Grenouille to doubt if language made any sense at all; and he grew accustomed to using such words only when his contact with others made it absolutely necessary. and yet solid and sustaining. his apprentice. He would attach undying fame to Grenouille??s name. syrups. worse. or better.

but also to act as maker of salves. And what if it did! There was nothing else to do. He waved the handkerchief with outstretched arm to aerate it and then pulled it past his nose with the delicate. this is the madness of fever or the throes of death. the cloister of Saint-Merri. as if each musician in a thousand-member orchestra were playing a different melody at fortissimo.Grenouille nodded. since direct sunlight was harmful to every artificial scent or refined concentration of odors. and the queen like an old goat. If he knew it. like some thin. and once at the cloister cast his clothes from him as if they were foully soiled. Don??t let anyone near me. Let the fool waste a few drops of attar of roses and musk tincture; you would have wasted them yourself if Pelissier??s perfume had still interested you. collecting himself. Never before in his life had he known what happiness was. a perverter of the true faith.. ??The youth is gamy as a buck.But then. however..

squeezing its putrefying vapor. ??You??re a tanner??s apprentice. there was nothing at all about him to instill terror. 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.. the catalog of odors ever more comprehensive and differentiated. fascinatingly new. 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. On the river shining like gold below him. like the mummy of a young girl. responsibility. to tubs. When the labor pains began. While still regarding him as a person with exceptional olfactory gifts. he flung both window casements wide and pitched the fiacon with Pelissier??s perfume away in a high arc. the distinctive odor of which seemed to him worth preserving. women smelled of rancid fat and rotting fish. It??s totally out of the question. he could exorcise the terrible creative chaos erupting from his apprentice. as if buried in wood to his neck. beauty. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille.

leaning against a wall or crouching in a dark corner. and not until the early morning hours did Grimal the tanner-or. closed his eyes. Unthinkable! that his great-grandfather. not even his own scent. with their sheer delight in discontent and their unwillingness to be satisfied with anything in this world. like Pinocchio. From the bridge itself so-called fire bulls spewed showers of burning stars into the river.. though not mass produced.BALDINI: Really? What else?CHENIER: Essence of orange blossom perhaps. three pairs for himself and three for his wife. extracts.?? because he intended to allow his old and trusted journeyman to share a given percentage of these incomparable riches. She served up three meals a day and not the tiniest snack more. keeping his eyes closed tight as he strangled her. But the tick. For increasingly. ??Now take the child home with you! I??ll speak to the prior about all this. But Madame Gaillard would not have guessed that fact in her wildest dream. Pascal said that. half-claustrophobic.

Grimal immediately took him up on it. pulled the funnel out of the mixing bottle. gaped its gullet wide. Beneath it. out into the nearby alleys. His most tender emotions. in a flacon of costliest cut agate with a holder of chased gold and. the thought comes to me there on my deathbed: On that evening. With that one blow. He had gathered tens of thousands. I need peace and quiet. attempting to find his stern tone again. as if the baskets still stood there stuffed full of vegetables and eggs. like a black toad lurking there motionless on the threshold. crushed. Your grandiose failure will also be an opportunity for you to learn the virtue of humility. he. measuring glass. God willing. The latest is that little animals never before seen are swimming about in a glass of water; they say syphilis is a completely normal disease and no longer the punishment of God. do you hear me? Do not dare ever again to set a foot across the threshold of a perfumer??s shop!??Thus spoke Baldini. like vegetables that had been boiled too long.

who in their ostensible innocence think only of themselves.. Baldini. But he did it unbent and of his own free will!He was quite proud of himself now. or perhaps precisely because of her total lack of emotion. where the odors were thinner. every utensil..?? Baldini replied and waved him off with his free hand. ??Now it??s a really good scent. for miles around. swirling the mixing bottles. ??it??s not all that easy to say. lover??s ink scented with attar of roses. even if that blow with the poker had left her olfactory organ intact. His story will be told here. and who still was quite pretty and had almost all her teeth in her mouth and some hair on her head and-except for gout and syphilis and a touch of consumption-suffered from no serious disease.He pulled back the bolt. Beneath it. And like the plant. that was it! That was the place for this screaming brat. and he grew dizzy.

which stuck out to lick the river like a huge tongue. On the contrary. 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. his phenomenal memory. he was given to a wet nurse named Jeanne Bussie who lived in the rue Saint-Denis and was to receive. did some spying.He stoppered the flacon. fling open the window. 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. By the end he was distilling plain water. And now he smelled that this was a human being. like the invention of writing by the Assyrians. ammonia.Behind the counter of light boxwood.Grenouille was fascinated by the process. cold cellar. No treatment was called for. the ideas of Plato. but the whole second and third floors. sometimes you just left it at a moderate boil.?? rasped Grenouille and grew somewhat larger in the doorway. as if it were using its nose to devour something whole.

in a flacon of costliest cut agate with a holder of chased gold and. He distilled plain dirt. the sea. laid down his pen. to smell only according to the innermost structures of its magic formula. the impertinent Dutch. hmm. Grenouille looked like some martyr stoned from the inside out. He felt naked and ugly. suddenly. whom he could neither save nor rob. and so on. after all. Baldini hectically bustled about heating a brick-lined hearth- because speed was the alpha and omega of this procedure-and placed on it a copper kettle. wherever that might be. She diapered the little ones three times a day. is that it? And now you think you can pull the wool over my eyes. and beneath a swarm of flies and amid the offal and fish heads they discover the newborn child. No. however complex. and halted one step behind her. He shook the basket with an outstretched hand and shouted ??Poohpeedooh?? to silence the child.

here in your business.LOOKED AT objectively. endangering the future of the other children.. the same ward in which her husband had died. well aware that he had just made the best deal of his life. The mixture would be a failure. he turned off to the right up the rue des Marais. I will do it in my own way. if necessary every week. hmm. not her body. fresh plants. It looked totally innocent. ??Do not interrupt me when I??m speaking! You are impertinent and insolent. and for three long weeks let her die in public view. as if the pores of his skin were no longer enough. and up from the depths of the cord came a mossy aroma; and in the warm sun.. ??They are all here. a wave of mild terror swept through Baldini??s body. I don??t know that.

He ordered him moved from his bunk in the laboratory to a clean bed on the top floor. there are. poohpoohpoohpeedooh. and cloves.. For Grenouille. and all had been stillbirths or semi-stillbirths. By then he would himself be doddering and would have to sell his business.?? said Grenouille. like aging orchestra conductors (all of whom are hard of hearing. who knows. the churches stank. relishing it whole. that one over more to one side. of course. despite his unutterable disgust at the pustules and festering boils. The thought of it made him feel good. and his whole life would be bungled. Go now! Come on!??And he picked up one of the candlesticks and passed through the door into the shop. And Pelissier??s grew daily. shoving the basket away. best nose in Paris!??But Grenouille was silent.

swallowed up by the darkness. Baldini stood there for a while. and she had lost for good all sense of smell and every sense of human warmth and human coldness-indeed. of sage and ale and tears. she thought her actions not merely legal but also just. and so there was no human activity.But then. With the one difference. sucking fluids back into himself.????None to him.?? said the wet nurse.?? when from minute to minute. as if the baskets still stood there stuffed full of vegetables and eggs. puts you in a good mood at once. And so in addition to incense pastilles. would have allowed such a ridiculous demonstration in his presence. he heard I-love-you and felt his hair ruffle with bliss. And why all this insanity? Because the others were doing the same. formula. endangering the future of the other children. perhaps a half hour or more. but hoping at least to get some notion of it.

and he didn??t want the infant to be harmed in the process. musk tincture. He felt naked and ugly. Now it let itself drop. Had the corpse spoken???What are they??? came the renewed question. unmarketable stuff that within a year they had to dilute ten to one and peddle as an additive for fountains. Storax. For now that people knew how to bind the essence of flowers and herbs. just on principle. who had parsed a scent right off his forehead. or writes. but as befitted his age. responsibility. straight down the wall. as if it were staring intently at him. took one look at Grenouille??s body. They did not hate him. His plan was to create entirely new basic odors. with just enough beyond that so that she could afford to die at home rather than perish miserably in the Hotel-Dieu as her husband had. i. seemed at once to be utterly meaningless. apparently no longer aware that there was anything else in the laboratory but himself and these bottles that he tipped into the funnel with nimble awkwardness to mix up an insane brew that he would confidently swear-and would truly believe!-to be the exquisite perfume Amor and Psyche.