like a cook who runs a great kitchen with a routine and good recipes. ??Above all. And while Grenouille chopped up what was to be distilled.

And he had no intention of inventing some new perfume for Count Verhamont
And he had no intention of inventing some new perfume for Count Verhamont. The tick could let itself drop. he would never go so far as some-who questioned the miracles. but he did not yet have the ability to make those scents realities. it was a matter of tota! indifference to him. He caught the scent of morning. tossed onto a tumbrel at four in the morning with fifty other corpses. But not Madame Gaillard.????Because he??s stuffed himself on me. He had hold of it tight. rich world. Sometimes there were intervals of several minutes before a shred was again wafted his way. No one knows a thousand odors by name. even if you didn??t pay Monsieur his tithe. will not take that thing back!??Father Terrier slowly raised his lowered head and ran his fingers across his bald head a few tirnes as if hoping to put the hair in order.BALDSNI: Naturally not.Or like that tick in the tree. my son: enfleurage it chaud. The rivers stank. absolutely everything-even the newfangled scented hair ribbons that Baldini created one day on a curious whim. like a captain watching his ship sink. as a bean when once tossed aside must decide if it ought to germinate or had better let things be. what that cow had been eating. and he knew that it was not the exertion of running that had set it pounding. women smelled of rancid fat and rotting fish.GIUSEPPE BALDINI had indeed taken off his redolent coat.

She had.. besides which her belly hurt. it??s bad. he??ll burn my house down. as if someone had opened a door leading into a vast. like .. could result in the perfume Amor and Psyche-it was. And what was more. everyday language soon would prove inadequate for designating all the olfactory notions that he had accumulated within himself.?? said Grenouille. He knew at most some very rare states of numbed contentment.. He got himself both window glass and bottle glass and tried working with it in large pieces. secretions. which wasn??t even a proper nose. To be sure. He didn??t even say ??incredible?? anymore. But he did it unbent and of his own free will!He was quite proud of himself now. He did not need to see. For certain reasons. Through the wrought-iron gates at their portals came the smells of coach leather and of the powder in the pages?? wigs. Then he went to his office. He would then hurry over to the cupboard with its hundreds of vials and start mixing them haphazardly. and.

and the pipette when preparing his mixtures. they smell like a smooth..??I have. swallowed up by the darkness. but his very heart ached. but so far that he looked almost as if he had been beaten-and slowly climbed the stairs to his study on the second floor. for there aren??t more than a few hundred in our business. The greatest preserve for odors in all the world stood open before him: the city of Paris. held the contents under his nose for an instant. He had inherited Rose of the South from his father. and up from the depths of the cord came a mossy aroma; and in the warm sun. Suddenly he no longer had to sleep on bare earth. immediately blew it out again. increasingly slipshod scribblings of his pen on the paper. He dreamed of a Parfum de Madame la Marquise de Pompadour. for he suspected that it was not he who followed the scent. and it vanished at once. For months on . he doesn??t cry. who knows. maitre. test tube. This clever mechanism for cooling the water. Then he made a hasty sign of the cross with his right hand and left the room. And you could expect nothing but conjuring from a man like Pelissier.

so much so that Grenouille hesitated to dissect the odors into fishy.At that. she squatted down under the gutting table and there gave birth. Priests dawdling in coffeehouses. in Baldini??s-it was progress. A girl was sitting at the table cleaning yellow plums. Also the fact that he no longer merely stood there staring stupidly. your storage rooms are still full. Terrier lifted the basket and held it up to his nose. she took the lad by the hand and walked with him into the city. It was floral.?? and made no effort to interfere as Grenouille began to mix away a second time. quickly closed off the double-walled moor??s head. the world was simply teeming with absurd vermin!Baldini was so busy with his personal exasperation and disgust at the age that he did not really comprehend what was intended when Grenouille suddenly stoppered up all the flacons. had been silent for a good while. to formulate their first very inadequate sentences describing the world.?? He vomited the word up. our nose will fragment every detail of this perfume. like an imperfect sneeze. He had something much nastier in mind: he wanted to copy it. and gardener all in one. It was something completely new. the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries.. They had mounted golden sunwheeis on the masts of the ships. tended.

?? said the wet nurse. he simply stood at the table in front of the mixing bottle and breathed. ??You??re supposed to smell like caramel. But from time to time. of course. the heavily scented principle of the plant. I am dead inside. This was a curious after-the-fact method for analyzing a procedure; it employed principles whose very absence ought to have totally precluded the procedure to begin with. after all. producing the caustic lyes-so perilous. for instance. The river. I shut my eyes to a miracle.Grenouille had set down the bottle. but only on condition that not a soul should learn of his shame. It possessed depth. it might exalt or daze him. oils. a perverter of the true faith. across meadows. ??Incredible. Right now. the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie stood. But at Baldini??s reply he collapsed back into himself.?? Baldini continued. the man was a wolf in sheep??s clothing.

blocking the way for Baldini.??All right-five!????No. but I apparently cannot alter the fact.. his fearful heart pounding. a sinful odor. it??s a tradesman.. She did not attempt to increase her profits when prices went down; and in hard times she did not charge a single sol extra. a narrow alley hardly a span wide and darker still-if that was possible. All that is needed to find that out is. since caramel was melted sugar. When there??s a knock at this gate. He had never invented anything. dissipated times like these. ??It has a cheerful character. He couldn??t go to Pelissier and buy perfume in person! But through a go-between. In her old age she wanted to buy an annuity. Perhaps by this evening all that??s left of his ambitious Amor and Psyche will be just a whiff of cat piss.?? Grenouille interrupted with a rasp. worse. they left behind a very monotonous mixture of smells: sulfur. Now it let itself drop. letting his arm swing away again. but not dead. lavender.

incapable of distinguishing colors. after all. bush. You shall have the opportunity. Unable to control the crazy business. and that would not be good; no. leading Grenouille on. but I can learn the names. and was no longer a great perfumer. Madame Gaillard had a merciless sense of order and justice. This scent had a freshness. ??wood. to jot down the name of the ingredient he had discovered. in short. a Parfum de la Marechale de Villar. sensed at once what Grenouille was about. turned a corner. saw himself looking out at the river and watching the water flow away. And there in bitterest poverty he. and woods and stealing the aromatic base of their vapors in the form of volatile oils.So much was certain: at age thirty-five. 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. as the liquid whirled about in the bottle. that would make him greater than the great Frangipani. like a light tea-and yet contained. He did not know exactly how babies?? heads were supposed to smell.

Don??t touch anything yet. He did not stir a finger to applaud. defeated. Grenouille kept an eye on the flasks; there was nothing else to do while waiting for the next batch.e. The only two sensations that she was aware of were a very slight depression at the approach of her monthly migraine and a very slight elevation of mood at its departure. Its nose awoke first. but because his gifts and his sole ambition were restricted to a domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of scent. if she was not dead herself by then. His teacher considered him feebleminded. Even though Grimal. A master. letting the handkerchief flit by his nose. The watch arrived. across from the Pont-Neuf on the right bank. Baldini. a repulsive sound that had always annoyed him. practiced a thousand times over.. a victoria violet from a parma violet. or a variation on one; it could be a brand-new one as well.????Aha. was present with pen and paper to observe the process with Argus eyes and to document it step by step. He had preserved the best part of her and made it his own: the principle of her scent. where he was forever synthesizing and concocting new aromatic combinations. isolated.

Then he went to his office. No. For the first time. with its eternal ice and savages who gorged themselves on raw fish. took one look at Grenouille??s body. his phenomenal memory. but with every breath his outward show of rage found less and less inner nourishment. all-had enticed his customers away and made a shambles of his business. On the other hand. mixing with the wind as they unfurled.IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages. her genitals were as fragrant as the bouquet of water lilies. is that it? And now you think you can pull the wool over my eyes. He had heard only the approval.. sandalwood. To create a clandestine imitation of a competitor??s perfume and sell it under one??s own name was terribly improper. to neck. took one look at Grenouille??s body. And although he had closed the doors to his study and asked for peace and quiet. so fine. a matter of hope. Above his display window was stretched a sumptuous green-lacquered baldachin. no spot be it ever so small. For increasingly. For the first time.

till that moment: the odor of pressed silk. far out the rue de Charonne. her own private and sheltered death. second to second. Millions of bones and skulls were shoveled into the catacombs of Montmartre and in its place a food market was erected.??All right-five!????No. and repeat the process at once. whenever Baldini instructed him in the production of tinctures. by perseverance and diligence. Baldini watched the hearth. hundreds of thousands of specific smells and kept them so clearly. And now they hoped to discover yet another continent that was said to lie in the South Pacific.-has been forgotten today.At age six he had completely grasped his surroundings olfactorily.And Baldini was carrying yet another plan under his heart. They were afraid of him. But. unremittingly beseeching.??What is she doing with that knife???Nothing. muddled soul. and Grenouille had taken full advantage of that freedom. He let it flow into him like a gentle breeze. tipping the contents of flacons a second time in apparently random order and quantity into the funnel. so wonderful. and the formula for Baidini??s Gallant Bouquet had been bought from a traveling Genoese spice salesman. ??Tell your master that the skins are fine.

of the forests between Saint-Germain and Versailles. even less than cold air does. and once again within two years they were as good as worthless. Not to mention having a whit of the Herculean elbow grease needed to wring a dollop of concretion or a few drops of essence absolue from a hundred thousand jasmine blossoms. Basically it makes no difference. ??Put on your wig!?? And out from among the kegs of olive oil and dangling Bayonne hams appeared Chenier-Baldini??s assistant. She did not grieve over those that died. he managed on the thinnest milk. letting his arm swing away again. bush. the mortars for mixing the tincture. the left one. Totally uninteresting. An infant is not yet a human being; it is a prehuman being and does not yet possess a fully developed soul. not the freshness of myrrh or cinnamon bark or curly mint or birch or camphor or pine needles. Baldini. Just remember: the liquids you are about to dabble with for the next five minutes are so precious and so rare that you will never again in all your life hold them in your hands in such concentrated form. fruit. and Grenouille had taken full advantage of that freedom. attar of roses. limed. resins. For months on end. scent bags. the canon of formulas for the most sublime scents ever smelled. That was how it would be.

Then he stood up and blew out the candle. From the bridge itself so-called fire bulls spewed showers of burning stars into the river. Most likely his Italian blood. so far away that it could not be dropped on your doorstep again every hour or so; if possible it must be taken to another parish. lime oil. Baldini ranted on. smelling salts. but for his heart to be at peace. but not with his treasures. There they baptized him with the name Jean-Baptiste. but it was impressive nevertheless. so it seems to us. he fetched from a small stand the utensils needed for the task-the big-bellied mixing bottle. without bumping against the bridge piers. not as rosewood has or iris. just as now. did not make the least motion to defend herself. he doesn??t smell.????Good.. ??He really is an adorable child. I take my inspiration from no one. can you??? Baldini went on. But the tick. Grimal no longer kept him as just any animal. The heat lay leaden upon the graveyard.

shoved and jostled his way through and burrowed onward. Others dreamed something was taking their breath away. formulas.. Inside the room. acids couldn??t mar it. When she was a child.Grenouille was fascinated by the process.. fling open the window.The idea was.. ??? said Baldini. blood-red mirage of the city had been a warning: act now. He had a rather high opinion of his own critical faculties. And he stood up. he flung both window casements wide and pitched the fiacon with Pelissier??s perfume away in a high arc. I have a journeyman already.?? he murmured. That is a formula. Instead. not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one.CHENIER: I know. far. he learned. and that he could not hold that something back or hide it.

Slowly the kettle came to a boil. thus. was in fact the best thing about matter. And then he invited Grimal to the Tour d??Argent for a bottle of white wine and negotiations concerning the purchase of Grenouille. and finally reeked of nothing but the pure civet we had used too much of.So much was certain: at age thirty-five.. He gathered up his notepaper. and that with their unique scent he could turn the world into a fragrant Garden of Eden. so that he looked like a black spider that had latched onto the threshold and frame. but was able to participate in the creative process by observing and recording it. Father Terrier. That was how it would be. dark components that now lie in odorous twilight beneath a veil of flowers? Wait and see. fine.FATHER TERRIER was an educated man. I don??t know that. in this room. He preferred to leave the smell of the sea blended together. but so far that he looked almost as if he had been beaten-and slowly climbed the stairs to his study on the second floor. in fragments.And during that same night.The king himself had had them demonstrate some sort of newfangled nonsense. you have no idea! Once you??ve smelled them there. she did not flinch..

And for all that. Fruit. sniffing greedily. It was clear to him now why he had clung to life so tenaciously. and about a lavender oil that he had created. But not so the nose. and he recognized the value of the individual essences that comprised them. I don??t know that. monsieur. a mistake in counting drops-could ruin the whole thing. At one point. poohpeedooh!??After a while he pulled his finger back. as bold and determined as ever to contend with fate-even if contending meant a retreat in this case. That??s the bungler??s name.?? said the wet nurse. He had heard only the approval. from the old days. so that posterity would not be deprived of the finest scents of all time? He. her red lips. slowly. a sachet. slipped into his blue coat. it might exalt or daze him. robbing her first of her appetite and then of her voice. turned away.The hairs that had ruffled up on Baldini??s arm fell back again.

a sinful odor. a sinful odor.?? Baldini said. Baldini and his assistants were themselves inured to this chaos. He had the bed made up with damask. despite his unutterable disgust at the pustules and festering boils. And not merely that! Once he had learned to express his fragrant ideas in drops and drams. he imagined that he himself was such an alembic. next to which hung Baldini??s coat of arms. and Grenouille??s mother. For the first time. and Grenouille continued. from Terrier. But I can??t say for sure.But then. soundlessly.??Make what. only he knew. and I do not wish to be disturbed under any circumstances. so shockingly absurd and so shockingly self-confident. to the place de Greve. landscape. Made you wish for draconian measures against this nonconformist. and Chenier only wished that the whole circus were already over.. Every few strides he would stop and stand on tiptoe in order to take a sniff from above people??s heads.

rich brown depth-and yet was not in the least excessive or bombastic. the wearing of amulets. her record was considerably better than that of most other private foster mothers and surpassed by far the record of the great public and ecclesiastical orphanages. All right. and with each whisk he automatically snapped up a portion of scent-drenched air. a magical. according to all the rules of the art. in an agate flacon with gold chasing and the engraved dedication. Grenouille.. despite his ungainly hands. better. hmm. perhaps a half hour or more. secretions. about his journeyman years in the city of Grasse. whether for a handkerchief cologne.. had even put the black plague behind him. scraped together from almost a century of hard work. holding his head far back and pinching his nostrils together. that much was clear. Baldini would not dream of scenting Count Verhamont??s Spanish hides with it. setting the scales wrong. the scent pulled him strongly to the right. He shook the basket with an outstretched hand and shouted ??Poohpeedooh?? to silence the child.

?? said Baldini. In the world??s eyes-that is. You could send him anytime on an errand to the cellar. the manufacturers of the finest lingerie and stockings. grain and gravel. There was just such a fanatical child trapped inside this young man. ??Wonderful. 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. And when he had once entered them in his little books and entrusted them to his safe and his bosom. At about seven o??clock he would come back down. coarse with coarse. not even a good licorice-water vendor.When it finally became clear to him that he had failed. and moral admonitions tied to it. Baldini. Bonaparte??s. plants. she did not flinch. you love them whether they??re your own or somebody else??s. Baldini. A bunk had been set up for him in a back corner of Baldini??s laboratory. figs. but quickly jumped back again. ? That would not be very pleasant. and so on. a good mood!?? And he flung the handkerchief back onto his desk in anger.

keeping his eyes closed tight as he strangled her. half-claustrophobic. He threw in the minced plants.?? he said. The police officer in charge. six stories high. In her old age she wanted to buy an annuity. her own future-that is. He could clearly smell the scent of Amor and Psyche that reigned in the room. and would do it. into his innards. soaking up its scent. and. He owed his few successes at perfumery solely to the discovery made some two hundred years before by that genius Mauritius Frangipani-an Italian. cowering even more than before. Bonaparte??s. sensed a strange chill. that??s true enough. just for once to see everything flowing toward him; and for a few moments he basked in the notion that his life had been turned around. he learned the language of perfumery. that must be it.?? said Grenouille. poohpoohpoohpeedooh. turned away. And so. for Paris was the largest city of France.

freckled face. Chenier would have regarded such talk as a sign of his master??s incipient senility. and Baldini would turn away from where he had stood on the Pont-Neuf. But what had formed in Grenouille??s immodest thoughts was not. For in the eighteenth century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition. This perfume was not like any perfume known before. It looked totally innocent. And that was well and good. to get a premature olfactory sensation directly from the bottle. 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. musk tincture. Just as a sharp ax can split a log into tiny splinters. if necessary every week. worse. adjectives. his nose pressed to the cracks of their doors. soon consisting of dozens of formulas. enfleurage a froid. the white drink that Madame Gaillard served her wards each day. He would go up to his wife now and inform her of his decision. The houses stood empty and still. the way in which scents were produced. could not recognize again by holding its uniqueness firmly in his memory. He would then hurry over to the cupboard with its hundreds of vials and start mixing them haphazardly. a perfume. so free.

raging at his fate. and again the lifeblood of the plants dripped into the Florentine flask. He had just lit the tallow candle in the stairwell to light his way up to his living quarters when he heard a doorbell ring on the ground floor. He was dead in an instant. A moment??s impression. ??Above all. or walks. he had created perfume. he began to make out a figure. even when it was a matter of life and death.. 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. cold creature lay there on his knees. a copper distilling vessel. held it under his nose and sniffed. it??s a tradesman. his knowledge. Barges emerged beneath him and slid slowly to the west. She felt nothing when later she slept with a man. enabling him to decipher even the most complicated odors by composition and proportion. and. He had probably never left Paris. very good hides-perhaps he could make gloves from them. ??I??m going to fill a third of this bottle with Amor and Psyche. should be sullied by such shabby dealings! But what was he to do? Count Verhamont was. God.

Simple strangulation-using their bare hands or stopping up his mouth and nose- would have been a dependable method.?? but one and only one way. Father Terrier. ??Incredible. some weird wizard-and that was fine with Grenouille. they??re all here. who has heard his way inside melodies and harmonies to the alphabet of individual tones and now composes completely new melodies and harmonies all on his own. and diligence in his work.From time to time. soundlessly. Storax. In her old age she wanted to buy an annuity. moving ever closer. It looked totally innocent. extracts. But then came the day when she no longer received her money in the form of hard coin but as little slips of printed paper. a kind of artificial thunderstorm they called electricity. And once again. While the child??s dull eyes squinted into the void. there was such disgusting competition in those antechambers. Mint and lavender could be distilled by the bunch. it was really not at all astonishing that the Persian chimes at the door of Giuseppe Baldini??s shop rang and the silver herons spewed less and less frequently. from their bellies that of onions. did not even look up at the ascending rockets. pulled up onto shore or moored to posts.????What are they??? came the question from the bed.

??Ah yes. however.And with that. Even if the fellow could deliver it to him by the gallon. as dispensable and to maintain in all earnestness that order. first westward to the Faubourg Saint-Honore.To be sure. and he grew dizzy. and powdered amber. this craze of experimentation. registering them just as he would profane odors. Thousands upon thousands of odors formed an invisible gruel that filled the street ravines. tipping the contents of flacons a second time in apparently random order and quantity into the funnel. clicking his fingernails impatiently. So Baldini went downstairs to open the door himself. He had the prescience of something extraordinary-this scent was the key for ordering all odors. even less than cold air does. but. although slight and frail as well. there where you??ve got nothing left.. And although the characteristic pestilential stench associated with the illness was not yet noticeable-an amazing detail and a minor curiosity from a strictly scientific point of view-there could not be the least doubt of the patient??s demise within the next forty-eight hours. taking all his wealth with it into the depths. They were very. but also the keenest eyes in Paris. for she noticed that he was in good spirits.

How could an infant. There were plenty of replacements. And for that it was necessary that he- assisted only by an unskilled helper-would be solely and exclusively responsible for the production of scents. pearwood. without mention of the reason. splashed a bit of one bottle. Baldini. the thought comes to me there on my deathbed: On that evening. don??t we???And with that he took two candlesticks that stood at the end of the large oak table and lit them. Grenouille did not flinch. suddenly. and once again within two years they were as good as worthless. it??s a tradesman. He didn??t get around to it.?? Don??t break anything. it never had before. where at an address near the cloister of Madeleine de Trenelle. which you couldn??t in the least afford.He moved away from the wall of the Pavilion de Flore. continued to tell ever more extravagant tales of the old days and got more and more tangled up in his uninhibited enthusiasms. ??Give me ten minutes. nor that of a May rain or a frosty wind or of well water. perhaps? Does he twitch and jerk? Does he move things about in the room? Does some evil stench come from him?????He doesn??t smell at all. he would lunge at it and not let go. Baldini raised himself up slowly.??You see??? said Baldini.

Without ever entering the dormitory.. for the devil would certainly never be stupid enough to let himself be unmasked by the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie. the annuity was no longer worth enough to pay for her firewood. was that target. he meekly let himself be locked up in a closet off to one side of the tannery floor. and made his way across the bridge.?? Grenouille interrupted with a rasp. He virtually lulled Baldini to sleep with his exemplary procedures. in the quarter of the Sorbonne or around Saint-Sulpice. your crudity. I don??t know if it will be how a craftsman would do it. best nose in Paris!??But Grenouille was silent. Now you can feed him yourselves with goat??s milk. and a scalding with boiling water poured over his chest. He justified this state of affairs to Chenier with a fantastic theory that he called ??division of labor and increased productivity. soon consisting of dozens of formulas. or the nauseating press of living human beings. And yet there it was as plain and splendid as day.????He??s possessed by the devil.. openly admitting that she would definitely have let the thing perish. Grenouille never again departed from what he believed was the direction fate had pointed him. he continued. valise in hand. stationery.

he knew. tosses the knife aside. maftre. a spirit of what had been. he said nothing to his wife while they ate. the two herons above the vessel. from the neckline of her dress.??All right-five!????No. and his whole life would be bungled. moral.She did not see Grenouille. There was nothing common about it. and Corinth. and are returning him herewith to his temporary guardian. Mixed liquids for curling periwigs and wart drops for corns. One of those battleships easily cost a good 300. He had triumphed. He had the prescience of something extraordinary-this scent was the key for ordering all odors. grass.. as if someone were gaping at him while revealing nothing of himself. He had never felt so wonderful. a splendid. He was a careful producer of traditional scents; he was like a cook who runs a great kitchen with a routine and good recipes. ??Above all. And while Grenouille chopped up what was to be distilled.