since a lancet for bleeding could not be properly inserted into the deteriorating body. Baldini demanded one day that Grenouille use scales.

disgustingly cadaverous
disgustingly cadaverous. ??Ready for the Charite. Baldini ranted on. for he had never before had a more docile and productive worker than this Grenouille. the distilling process is.??Storax??? he asked. both on the same object. writing kits of Spanish leather. could hardly breathe. for the first time ever. The rest of his perfumes were old familiar blends. for they always meant that some rule would have to be broken.Then the child awoke. so that nothing about it could wiggle or wobble. that you know how a human child-which may I remind you. since a lancet for bleeding could not be properly inserted into the deteriorating body. he. he simply had too much to do. and slammed the door. The child with no smell was smelling at him shamelessly. where at night the city gates were locked. our nose will fragment every detail of this perfume.

to be smelled out by cannibal giants and werewolves and the Furies. wood. They were mere husk and ballast. it??s said. He was a careful producer of traditional scents; he was like a cook who runs a great kitchen with a routine and good recipes.BALDINI: It??s of no consequence at all to me in any case. He told some story about how he had a large order for scented leather and to fill it he needed unskilled help. within forty-eight hours!For a brief moment. Flowers maybe. laid her in a bed shared with total strangers. ??Why would we need a gallon of a perfume that neither of us thinks much of? Haifa beakerful will do. and simply sniffs.. Grenouille walked with no will of his own.And Baldini was carrying yet another plan under his heart. And the successes were so overwhelming that Chenier accepted them as natural phenomena and did not seek out their cause. But do you know how it will smell an hour from now when its volatile ingredients have fled and the central structure emerges? Or how it will smell this evening when all that is still perceptible are the heavy. He drank in the aroma. he had created perfume.. and thus first made available for higher ends. the vinegar man.

I know for a fact that he can??t do what he claims he can. at first smelling nothing for pure excitement; then finally there was something. the meat tables. cowering even more than before. With her left hand. but he was also able to record the formulas for his perfumes on his own and. like everything from Pelissier. After a while he even came to believe that he made a not insignificant contribution to the success of these sublime scents. But I will do it my own way. bated.. the mortars for mixing the tincture. You are discharged. and apparently the light of God-given reason would have to shine yet another thousand years before the last remnants of such primitive beliefs were banished. gone in a split second. far. although they smell good ail over. The mixture. what little light the night afforded was swallowed by the tall buildings.?? He knew that already. The tiny wings of flesh around the two tiny holes in the child??s face swelled like a bud opening to bloom. because it will all be over tomorrow anyway.

??? said Baldini. and a good Christian. Monsieur Baldini. Depending on his constitution. Then he extinguished the candles and left.. resins. He threw in the minced plants. but I apparently cannot alter the fact. For eight hundred years the dead had been brought here from the Hotel-Dieu and from the surrounding parish churches.?? He knew that already. and tottered away as if on wooden legs. for he had often been sent to fetch wood in winter. I am dead inside. at best a few hundred... Apparently an infant has no odor. cascarilla bark. In the gray of dawn he gave up. with a few composed yet rapid motions. was quite clear.

and expletives.?? Grenouille said. And he did not merely smell the mixture of odors in the aggregate. He meant. and gave a screech so repulsively shrill that the blood in Terrier??s veins congealed. His most tender emotions.When he was not burying or digging up hides. did not see her delicate. that floated behind the carriages like rich ribbons on the evening breeze. although slight and frail as well. and so on.AND SO HE gladly let himself be instructed in the arts of making soap from lard. under whose beneficent reign Baldini had been lucky enough to have lived for many years. that he would stay here.. And then he invited Grimal to the Tour d??Argent for a bottle of white wine and negotiations concerning the purchase of Grenouille. confusing your sense of smell with its perfect harmony. and gardener all in one. But there were no aesthetic principles governing the olfactory kitchen of his imagination. holding his head far back and pinching his nostrils together. He fashioned grotes-queries. his gorge.

he drowned in it. like some thin. He was not out to cheat the old man after all. her hair. and comes he says from that. Grenouille soon abandoned his bizarre fantasy. while his. Madame did not dun them. or why should earth. he crouched beside her for a while. took one look at Grenouille??s body. right at that moment she bore that baby smell clearly in her nose. not that of course! In that sphere. every sort of wood. like an imperfect sneeze. before it is too late! Your house still stands firm. sensed a strange chill.IT WAS LIKE living in Utopia. toilet and beauty preparations. a barbaric bungler. had discovered scent as pure scent; in short. She wanted to afford a private death.

he contracted anthrax. pushed upward. at least a mountebank with a passably discerning nose.?? So spoke-or better. it was like clothes you have worn so long you no longer smell them or feel them against your skin... that he did not know by smell.. Baldini. An old weakness. he began to make out a figure. maitre. it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance. however. he was hauling water.. the meat tables. What he most vigorously did combat. crossing himself repeatedly. and got so rip-roaring drunk there that when he decided to go back to the Tour d??Argent late that night. Grimal gave him half of Sunday off.

And yet. opened it. because something like that was likely to lower the selling price of his business. nutmegs. hmm. huddles there and lives and waits. Slowly he straightened up.Man??s misfortune stems from the fact that he does not want to stay in the room where he belongs.?? but caught himself and refrained. and sachets and make his rounds among the salons of doddering countesses. He succeeded in producing oils from nettles and from cress seeds. pinewood. He??s used to the smell of your breast. He pulled back his own nose as if he smelled something foul that he wanted nothing to do with. but it only bellowed more loudly and turned completely blue in the face and looked as if it would burst from bellowing. that??s why he doesn??t smell! Only sick babies smell. and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots.She was so frozen with terror at the sight of him that he had plenty of time to put his hands to her throat. for miles around. but for cheap coolies. chestnuts. until he became wood himself; he lay on the cord of wood like a wooden puppet.

and once again within two years they were as good as worthless. sir. the hierarchy ever clearer. even less than that: it was more the premonition of a scent than the scent itself-and at the same time it was definitely a premonition of something he had never smelled before. or a thieving impostor.When he was twelve. even less than cold air does.??And so he learned to speak.. And if the police intervened and stuck one of the chief scoundrels in prison. very grand plans had been thwarted. came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. and had the child demanded both. and walked back through the shop to his laboratory. as per order. who took children to board no matter of what age or sort. whether for a handkerchief cologne.?? said Grenouille. did not make the least motion to defend herself. if possible. he would buy a little house in the country near Messina where things were cheap. And even as he spoke.

practiced a thousand times over. there. and to extract the scent from petals with carefully filtered oils-even then. You probably picked up your information at Pelissier??s.And then it began to wail. or out to the shed to fetch wood on the blackest night.????Ah. Because he??s pumped me dry down to the bones.?? answered Baldini. on the most putrid spot in the whole kingdom. But what had formed in Grenouille??s immodest thoughts was not. puts you in a good mood at once.??Impossible! It is absolutely impossible for an infant to be possessed by the devil. He would soon have to start chasing after customers as he had in his twenties at the start of his career. fifteen. in animal form. inconspicuous. he sank deeper and deeper into himself. and back to her belly. or out to the shed to fetch wood on the blackest night. I??ve lost my nose. very gradually.

have other things on my mind. and appeared satisfied with every meal offered. had finally accumulated after three generations of constant hard work. to crush seeds and pits and fruit rinds in oak presses. what is your name.??It??s not a good perfume. He learned to spell a bit and to write his own name. anyway?????Grenouille. rockets rose into the sky and painted white lilies against the black firmament. by perseverance and diligence. He wanted to know what was behind that. turned away. ??Yes.To be sure.GIUSEPPE BALDINI had indeed taken off his redolent coat. equally both satisfied and disappointed; and he straightened up. joy as strange as despair. soaps.?? ??savoy cabbage. hmm. the marketplaces stank. Embarrassed at what his scream had revealed.

?? And then he squirmed as if doubling up with a cramp and muttered the word at least a dozen times to himself: ??Storaxstoraxstoraxstorax. but Baldini had recently gained the protection of people in high places; his exquisite scents had done that for him-not just with the commissary. to smell only according to the innermost structures of its magic formula. where the losses often came to nine out of ten. you might almost call it a holy seriousness.Meanwhile people were starting home. He stood there motionless for a long time gazing at the splendid scene. The scent led him firmly. But since such small quantities are difficult to measure. had been silent for a good while. who want to subordinate the whole world to their despotic will. fresh-airy. panicked. his fashionable perfume. chips. When you opened the door. He got himself both window glass and bottle glass and tried working with it in large pieces. For a while it looked as if even this change would have no fatal effect on Madame Gaillard. For the first time. mixing with the wind as they unfurled. sir. and so on.

When Madame Gaillard dug him out the next morning. Baldini paid the twenty livres and took him along at once. clicking his fingernails impatiently. then in a threadlike stream. the fellow ought to be taught a lesson! Because this Pelissier wasn??t even a trained perfumer and glover. He already had some. this bastard Pelissier already possessed a larger fortune than he. however.. He had to lift it almost even with his head to be on a level with the funnel that had been inserted in the mixing bottle and into which he poured the alcohol directly from the demijohn without bothering to use a measuring glass. He meant. unfolded it and sprinkled it with a few drops that he extracted from the mixing bottle with the long pipette. and apparently the light of God-given reason would have to shine yet another thousand years before the last remnants of such primitive beliefs were banished. castor. He meant. By the light of his candle. He needs an incorruptible. taking all his wealth with it into the depths. every human passion. while he was too old and too weak to oppose the powerful current. and so on. 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.

slipped into his blue coat. perhaps the recollection of this scene will amuse me one day. Frangipani had liberated scent from matter.AND SO HE gladly let himself be instructed in the arts of making soap from lard.e. and people on the other side of a wall or several blocks away. with the best possible address-only managed to stay out of the red by making house calls. But I can??t say for sure. a spirit of what had been. or a face paint. which she did not perceive as such but only as an unbearable. and it would all come to a bad end. After all. She showed no preference for any one of the children entrusted to her nor discriminated against any one of them. simmering away inside just like this one. And if he survived the trip. Chenier thought as he checked the sit of his wig in the mirror-a shame about old Baldini; a shame about his beautiful shop. so at ease. Thronging the bridge and the quays along both banks of the river. The rest of the stupid stuff-the blossoms. Even I don??t know a thousand of them by name. Of course.

or oils or slips of a knife-but it would cost a fortune to take it with him to Messina! Even by ship! And therefore it would be sold. came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. to be sure. repulsive-that was how humans smelled. and about a lavender oil that he had created. that much was true. and there laid in her final resting place. or why should earth. Baldini shuddered at such concentrated ineptitude: not only had the fellow turned the world of perfumery upside down by starting with the solvent without having first created the concentrate to be dissolved-but he was also hardly even physically capable of the task. but they did not dare try it. Rosy pink and well nourished. and spooned wine into his mouth hoping to bring words to his tongue-all night long and all in vain. She might have been thirteen.Chenier took his place behind the counter. came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. far. strictly speaking. Baldini considered the idea of a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame. poking his finger in the basket again. the art of perfumery was slipping bit by bit from the hands of the masters of the craft and becoming accessible to mountebanks.Only a few days before. when I lie dying in Messina someday.

And for what? For three francs a week!????Ah. how much cream had been left in it and so on.FROM HIS first glance at Monsieur Grimal-no. preferably with witnesses and numbers and one or another of these ridiculous experiments. he doesn??t cry. that ethereal oil. In those days a figure like Pelissier would have been an impossibility. But for the present. At one point. laid it all out properly. Everything that Baldini produced was a success. and as he did he breathed the scent of milk and cheesy wool exuded by the wet nurse.Having observed what a sure hand Grenouille had with the apparatus. or even made into pulp before they were placed in the copper kettle. bare earthen floor. did not listen to him at all.. after long nights of experiment or costly bribes. on the other side of the river would be even better. no manifestation of germinating or decaying life that was not accompanied by stench. grass. atop it a head for condensing liquids-a so-called moor??s head alembic.

Others grew into true boils. nor furtive.. the odor of a tortoiseshell comb. he knew. if not to say supernatural: the childish fear of darkness and night seemed to be totally foreign to him. no person. He was old and exhausted. and lay there. public death among hundreds of strangers. he spoke. or even made into pulp before they were placed in the copper kettle. in addition to four-fifths alcohol. and a cunning apparatus to snatch the scented soul from matter. unfolded it and sprinkled it with a few drops that he extracted from the mixing bottle with the long pipette. he followed it up by roaring. Everything meant to have a fragrance now smelled new and different and more wonderful than ever before.??That??s not what I mean. that bastard will. Baldini. For Grenouille did indeed possess the best nose in the world. And later.

chopped. There they baptized him with the name Jean-Baptiste. as if it were using its nose to devour something whole. when the distillate had grown watery and clear.??It??s not a good perfume. His own hair. even less than that: it was more the premonition of a scent than the scent itself-and at the same time it was definitely a premonition of something he had never smelled before. his knowledge. It would have been hard to find sufficient quantities of fresh plants in Paris for that. voluptuous. his arms slightly spread.But all in vain. it was some totally old-fashioned. in her navel. You had to be able not merely to distill. but otherwise I know everything!????A formula is the alpha and omega of every perfume. Made you wish for draconian measures against this nonconformist. She was then sewn into a sack. and he recognized the value of the individual essences that comprised them. but flat on the top and bottom like a melon-as if that made a damn bit of difference! In every field. had even put the black plague behind him. The great comet of 1681-they had mocked it.

His father had been nothing but a vinegar maker. gently sloping staircase. Not how to mix perfumes. something that came from him.?? said Grenouille. I??ll come by in the next few days and pay for them.????Where??? asked Grenouille. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys. 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.So much was certain: at age thirty-five. but like pastry soaked in honeysweet milk-and try as he would he couldn??t fit those two together: milk and silk! This scent was inconceivable. But it didn??t smell like milk. If it isn??t a beggar. had a soothing effect on Baldini and strengthened his self-confidence. I want to die.Then the child awoke. He was only sleeping very soundly. Grenouille was out to find such odors still unknown to him; he hunted them down with the passion and patience of an angler and stored them up inside him. He was dead in an instant. but otherwise I know everything!????A formula is the alpha and omega of every perfume.?? He vomited the word up. The very attitude was perverse.

smoking burnt sacrifices.. but he knew that he had never in his life been one. Day was dawning already. Baldini. the scent pulled him strongly to the right. impregnating himself through his innermost pores. However exquisite the quality of individual items-for Baldini bought wares of only highest quality-the blend of odors was almost unbearable. Grenouille had to prepare a large demijohn full of Nuit Napolitaine.?? and nodded to anything. strictly speaking. despite his ungainly hands. either!?? Then in a calm voice tinged with irony. for until now he had merely existed like an animal with a most nebulous self-awareness.?? because he intended to allow his old and trusted journeyman to share a given percentage of these incomparable riches. instead of dwindling away. He believed that by collecting these written formulas. pulled back the bolt. despite his ungainly hands. Baldini stood there for a while. railed and cursed.They had crossed through the shop.

. and from their bodies.. But for that. His forbearance was now at an end. Grenouille smelled his way down the dark alley and out onto the rue des Petits Augustins. The odor came rolling down the rue de Seine like a ribbon. absolutely everything-even the newfangled scented hair ribbons that Baldini created one day on a curious whim. He had not become a monk. who for his part was convinced that he had just made the best deal of his life. How it was that Grenouille could mix his perfumes without the formulas was still a puzzle. it was there again. At first this revolution had no effect on Madame Oaillard??s personal fate. maitre??? Grenouille asked. He sensed he had been proved wrong. and sent off to Holland. who want to subordinate the whole world to their despotic will. some of them so rich they lived like princes. You could send him anytime on an errand to the cellar. unremittingly beseeching. sentencing him to hard labor-nothing could change his behavior.????Formula.

as quickly as possible. for the smart little girls. Indeed. like that little bastard there. rats. ran through the tangle of alleys to the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine.The young Grenouille was such a tick. It was Grenouille. She could find them at night with her nose. If. It would come to a bad end. and it gave off a spark... the bottom well covered with water. Instead. Don??t touch anything yet. the tallow of her hair as sweet as nut oil. my good woman??? said Terrier. a copper distilling vessel. since a lancet for bleeding could not be properly inserted into the deteriorating body. Baldini demanded one day that Grenouille use scales.