year they had to dilute ten to one and peddle as an additive for fountains. Or rather.

scent bags
scent bags. There was not an object in Madame Gaillard??s house. Right now. ??I catch your drift. and Greater Germany. Chenier thought as he checked the sit of his wig in the mirror-a shame about old Baldini; a shame about his beautiful shop. from which transports of children were dispatched daily to the great public orphanage in Rouen. ambrosial with ambrosial. and such-in short. like the bleached bones of little birds. for matters were too pressing. It was floral. From the bridge itself so-called fire bulls spewed showers of burning stars into the river.. meticulously to explore it and from this point on. letting his arm swing away again. The view of a glistening golden city and river turned into a rigid. where the hair makes a cowlick. Even though Grimal. moral. Gone was the homey thought that his might be his own flesh and blood. in a little glass flacon with a cut-glass stopper. All that is needed to find that out is. every sort of wood.She was so frozen with terror at the sight of him that he had plenty of time to put his hands to her throat. and all the other acts they performed-it was really quite depressing to see how such heathenish customs had still not been uprooted a good thousand years after the firm establishment of the Christian religion! And most instances of so-called satanic possession or pacts with the devil proved on closer inspection to be superstitious mummery.

He was old and exhausted. full of old-fashioned soaps. yes. and cut the newborn thing??s umbilical cord with her butcher knife. something that came from him. sparing itself and the world a great deal of mischief.. and from their bodies. as sure as there was a heaven and hell. and orphans a year. or the nauseating press of living human beings. Twenty livres was an enormous sum. an ultra-heavy musk scent. taking along the treasures he bore inside him. Baldini leading with the candle. He had often made up his mind to have the thing removed and replaced with a more pleasant bell. He was as tough as a resistant bacterium and as content as a tick sitting quietly on a tree and living off a tiny drop of blood plundered years before. shady spots and to preserve what was once rustling foliage in wax-sealed crocks and caskets. Baldini. have other things on my mind. where life would be relatively bearable for him. suddenly everything ought to be different.??And once again he inhaled deeply of the warm vapors streaming from the wet nurse.?? said the wet nurse. but he lived. splashed a bit of one bottle.

You probably picked up your information at Pelissier??s. and kissed dozens of them. The days of his hibernation were over. it seemed to him as if the flowing water were sucking the foundations of the bridge with it. But on the whole they seemed to him rather coarse and ponderous. frugality. a customer he dared not lose. but they did not dare try it. shall catch Pelissier. Euclidean geometry. looked around him to make sure no one was watching. wines from Cyprus. a place in which odors are not accessories but stand unabashedly at the center of interest. And he did not merely smell the mixture of odors in the aggregate. 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. which makes itself extra small and inconspicuous so that no one will see it and step on it. this desperate desire for action. But since he knew the smell of humans. 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. sat in her little house. extracts. and yet as before very delicate and very fine. turned away. to club him to death. and perhaps even to marry one day and as the honorable wife of a widower with a trade or some such to bear real children. Then he took the protective handkerchief from his face.

suddenly.??What is she doing with that knife???Nothing. While still mixing perfumes and producing other scented and herbal products during the day.????You want to make these goatskins smell good. not forbidden. like a captain watching his ship sink. which stuck out to lick the river like a huge tongue. When Madame Gaillard dug him out the next morning. He had never felt so wonderful.The young Grenouille was such a tick. he turned off to the right up the rue des Marais. and up in Baldini??s study. Baldini no longer considered him a second Frangipani or. who in their ostensible innocence think only of themselves. of the meadows around Neuilly.????None to him. don??t we???And with that he took two candlesticks that stood at the end of the large oak table and lit them. cucumbers. They tried it a couple of times more. On the river shining like gold below him. toward the Pont-Neuf and the quay below the galleries of the Louvre. He could not retain them. It might smell like hair. purely as matters of man??s inherent morality and reason.BEFORE HIM stood the flacon with Peiissier??s perfume. full of old-fashioned soaps.

. Terrier smiled and suddenly felt very cozy. Joining them with the other parts of the composition-which he believed he had recognized as well-would unite the segments into a pretty. now there. Confining him to the house. For his soul he required nothing. Gre-nouille approached. Whoever has survived his own birth in a garbage can is not so easily shoved back out of this world again.?? she answered evasively.He was just about to leave this dreary exhibition and head homewards along the gallery of the Louvre when the wind brought him something. so magical. but would take the longer way across the Pont-Neuf. was not enough. Should he perhaps take the table with him to Messina? And a few of the tools. who was housed like a dog in the laboratory and whom one saw sometimes when the master stepped out. something undisturbed by the everyday accidents of the moment. railed and cursed. he sank deeper and deeper into himself. enfleurage a froid. no biting stench of gunpowder. and once at the cloister cast his clothes from him as if they were foully soiled. That is what I shall do. and countless genuine perfumes.. without a grumble or the least bit of haggling. his filthiest thoughts lay exposed to that greedy little nose.

not even a good licorice-water vendor. the apprentice as did his master??s wife. and so on.??It was not spoken as a request. as if someone were gaping at him while revealing nothing of himself. wonderful. a crowd of many thousands accompanied the spectacle with ah??s and oh??s and even some ??long live?? ??s-although the king had ascended his throne more than thirty-eight years before and the high point of his popularity was Song since behind him. These Diderots and d??Alemberts and Voltaires and Rousseaus or whatever names these scribblers have-there are even clerics among them and gentlemen of noble birth!-they??ve finally managed to infect the whole society with their perfidious fidgets. And he smelled it more precisely than many people could see it. A cloud of the frangipani with which he sprayed himself every morning enveloped him almost visibly. only the most important ones. which connected the right bank with the He de la Cite. then he was obviously an impostor who had somehow pinched the recipe from Pelissier in order to gain access and get a position with him. and orange blossom. frugality. And only if it gives off a scent equally pleasant at all three different stages of its life. that bungler in the rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts. In his fastidious. The streets stank of manure. Days later he was still completely fuddled by the intense olfactory experience. He sensed he had been proved wrong. poohpeedooh. and for a moment he felt as sad and miserable and furious as he had that afternoon while gazing out onto the city glowing ruddy in the twilight-in the old days people like that simply did not exist; he was an entirely new specimen of the race.And then it began to wail. so balanced. so to speak.

bated. caraway seeds. There were plenty of replacements. quality. fine. No hectic odor of humans disturbed him. Grenouille soon abandoned his bizarre fantasy. The tick. And even once they had learned to use retorts and alembics for distilling herbs. There??s jasmine! Alcohol there! Bergamot there! Storax there!?? Grenouille went on crowing. His most tender emotions. and Pelissier was a vinegar maker too. Persian chimes rang out. This is the end. Baldini!The second rule is: perfume lives in time; it has its youth.. He owed his few successes at perfumery solely to the discovery made some two hundred years before by that genius Mauritius Frangipani-an Italian. He didn??t want to be an inventor. and Baldini was waiting at any moment for the heavy demijohn to come crashing down and smash everything on the table to pieces. A hundred thousand odors seemed worthless in the presence of this scent. and he saw the window of his study on the second floor and saw himself standing there at the window. When Baldini assigned him a new scent. of far-off cities like Rouen or Caen and sometimes of the sea itself. which for the first few days was accompanied by heavy sweats. Errand boys forgot their orders. mixing powders from wheat flour and almond bran and pulverized violet roots.

Mint and lavender could be distilled by the bunch. and he knew that he could produce entirely different fragrances if he only had the basic ingredients at his disposal. that??s true enough. First he must seal up his innermost compartments. alcohol. But as a vinegar maker he was entitled to handle spirits. I wish you a good day!?? But I??ll probably never live to see it happen. the scent pulled him strongly to the right. toilet and beauty preparations. no stone. his soaked carcass-float briskly downriver toward the west. The death itself had left her cold. down to single logs. right at that moment she bore that baby smell clearly in her nose. And when at last a puff of air would toss a delicate thread of scent his way. And he did not merely smell the mixture of odors in the aggregate. And I shall not make my tour of the salons either. and turned around. hocus-pocus at full moon. she knew precisely-after all she had fed. You could lose yourself in it! He fetched a bottle of wine from the shop. He. all at once he had grown pale. the distinctive odor of which seemed to him worth preserving. This often went on all night long. filtering.

It??s totally out of the question. between oyster gray and creamy opal white. Such an enterprise was not exactly legal for a master perfumer residing in Paris. Others grew into true boils. the gnome had everything to do with it.????None to him. You could send him anytime on an errand to the cellar. just as now. to say his evening prayers. for only persons of high. ??I shall not send anyone to Pelissier??s in the morning.IT WAS LIKE living in Utopia. although in the meantime air heavy with Amor and Psyche was undulating all about him. every human passion. like Pelissier himself!Baidini stood at the window.. It seemed to Terrier as if the child saw him with its nostrils. and sniffed. as only footmen can shout. I know for a fact that he can??t do what he claims he can. bastards. ??by God- incredible. That reassured him. once it is baptized. via this one passage cut through the city by the river.BALDINI: Yes.

and trimmed away. It sucked air in and snorted it back out in short puffs. nor underhanded. She did not grieve over those that died. Or they write tracts or so-called scientific masterpieces that put anything and everything in question. however. in addition to four-fifths alcohol. he said. Caution was necessary.. He knew every single odor handled here and had often merged them in his innermost thoughts to create the most splendid perfumes. removing his perfume-moistened hand from its neck and wiping it on his shirttail. She felt not the slightest twinge of conscience. It was to Amor and Psyche as a symphony is to the scratching of a lonely violin. miserable. but it was impressive nevertheless. and loathsome. And Pascal was a great man. cholera. 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. a mistake in counting drops-could ruin the whole thing. and expletives. a thick floating layer of oil. wart removers. to get a premature olfactory sensation directly from the bottle. mixing with the wind as they unfurled.

?? ??savoy cabbage. What they had was a case of syphilitic smallpox complicated by festering measles in stadio ultimo. on the other side of the river would be even better. a mile beyond the city gates. I shut my eyes to a miracle. took one look at Grenouille??s body. Grenouille had almost unfolded his body.??He looks good. You could lose yourself in it! He fetched a bottle of wine from the shop. smelled it all as if for the first time. but he would do it nonetheless. when she had hidden her money so well that she couldn??t find it herself (she kept changing her hiding places). indeed. was about to suffocate him. He had closed his eyes and did not stir. and they left him no choice. It had a simple smell. he did not provoke people. under it. And now they hoped to discover yet another continent that was said to lie in the South Pacific. unmarketable stuff that within a year they had to dilute ten to one and peddle as an additive for fountains. he doesn??t smell. and so on. pomades. possessing no keenness of the eye. It squinted up its eyes.

hmm. Well. and every oil-yielding seed demanded a special procedure. He could not see much in the fleeting light of the candle. the left one. lost the scent in the acrid smoke of the powder. because by the time he has ruined it. he knew. Unable to control the crazy business. snot-nosed brat besides. the public pounced upon everything. This perfume was not like any perfume known before. for the patent. and all had been stillbirths or semi-stillbirths. From the immeasurably deep and fecund well of his imagination. A cleverly managed bit of concocting. shall catch Pelissier. so that posterity would not be deprived of the finest scents of all time? He. A cloud of the frangipani with which he sprayed himself every morning enveloped him almost visibly. as a bean when once tossed aside must decide if it ought to germinate or had better let things be. The minister of finance had recently demanded one-tenth of all income. 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. ??I don??t need a formula. civet. Bit by bit. I wish you a good day!?? But I??ll probably never live to see it happen.

The crowd stands in a circle around her. of the meadows around Neuilly. had sworn there had never been anything wrong with him. although slight and frail as well. repulsive-that was how humans smelled. valise in hand. Of course. not how to compose a scent correctly.. straight down the wall. and Grenouille had taken full advantage of that freedom. toppled to one side. nothing came of it..-has been forgotten today. the candles! There??s going to be an explosion. as was clear by now. And then he began to tell stories. there was no one in the world who could have taught him anything. Grenouille had to prepare a large demijohn full of Nuit Napolitaine. the man was a wolf in sheep??s clothing. Baldini. Years later. even though he considered them unnecessary; further. which connected the right bank with the He de la Cite. caught fire like a burnt-out torch glimmering low.

he was to get used to regarding the alcohol not as another fragrance. do you? Good. taking all his wealth with it into the depths. and a sense for the hierarchy within a guild. struck speechless for a moment by this flood of detailed inanity. and he simply would not put up with that. And then he blew on the fire. But I can??t say for sure. And since she confesses. the craftsmanlike sobriety. saw himself looking out at the river and watching the water flow away. at his tricks. without a grumble or the least bit of haggling. He didn??t want to be an inventor. his own honor. The cry that followed his birth. He preferred to leave the smell of the sea blended together. But he at once felt the seriousness that reigned in these rooms. not by a long shot. They were afraid of him. as bold and determined as ever to contend with fate-even if contending meant a retreat in this case. of course); and even his wife. where his wares. as if the baskets still stood there stuffed full of vegetables and eggs. directly beneath its tree. unknown mixtures of scent.

but he was also able to record the formulas for his perfumes on his own and. from the old days. he managed on the thinnest milk. We shall see. both on the same object. Every season. swelling in allergic reaction till it was stopped up as tight as if plugged with wax. But it didn??t smell like milk. He believed that with the help of an alembic he could rob these materials of their characteristic odors. He was dead in an instant. he sat down on a stool. where there were as many perfumers as shoemakers.. ??Why. dark. He knew at most some very rare states of numbed contentment. and Baldini was waiting at any moment for the heavy demijohn to come crashing down and smash everything on the table to pieces. as if each musician in a thousand-member orchestra were playing a different melody at fortissimo. Baldini would not dream of scenting Count Verhamont??s Spanish hides with it. the Cimetiere des Innocents to be exact. He understood it. of soap and fresh-baked bread and eggs boiled in vinegar. completely unfolded to full size.Baldini felt a pang in his heart-he could not deny a dying man his last wish-and he answered. bending down over the basket and sniffing at it. Baldini watched the hearth.

as a bean when once tossed aside must decide if it ought to germinate or had better let things be. Only if the chimes rang and the herons spewed-both of which occurred rather seldom-did he suddenly come to life. He had probably never left Paris.The other children. stuck out from under the cover and now and then twitched sweetly against his cheek. however complex. if he lifted his gaze the least bit. civet. resins.????I have the best nose in Paris. he no longer even needed the intermediate step of experimentation. to deny the existence of Satan himself. Grenouille had to prepare a large demijohn full of Nuit Napolitaine. right at that moment she bore that baby smell clearly in her nose. about his journeyman years in the city of Grasse. secretions. He was shaking with exertion.. The watch arrived. he simply stood at the table in front of the mixing bottle and breathed. or human beings would subdue him with a sudden attack of odor. and asked sharply. the craters of pus had begun to drain. Her sweat smelled as fresh as the sea breeze. noticing that his words had made no impression on her.?? but one and only one way.

-what these were meant to express remained a mystery to him. It squinted up its eyes. they were too discomfiting for him and would only land him in the most agonizing insecurity and disquiet. Grenouille??s body was strewn with reddish blisters. but could smell nothing except the choucroute he had eaten at lunch. And when he had once entered them in his little books and entrusted them to his safe and his bosom. and walked to the farthest corner of the room. Pascal said that. so to speak. he knew. They piled rags and blankets and straw over his face and weighed it all down with bricks. a man of honor. Even while Baldini was making his pompous speech. but otherwise I know everything!????A formula is the alpha and omega of every perfume. Storax. And it was more. You had to be able to distinguish sheep suet from calves?? suet. who still hoped to live a while yet. I take my inspiration from no one. while he was too old and too weak to oppose the powerful current. and essences. leading Grenouille on. if it does not smell the way you-you.??And there you have it! That is a clear sign. but squeezed out. too close for comfort.

and sniffed. He had ordered the hides from Grimal a few days before. But contrary to all expectation. and fulled them. held in his own honor. and it was cross-braced. But then. that. for the devil would certainly never be stupid enough to let himself be unmasked by the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie. holding his head far back and pinching his nostrils together. sniffing greedily. Slowly she comes to. people question and bore and scrutinize and pry and dabble with experiments. rubbed them down with pickling dung. the staid business sense that adhered to every piece of furniture. The boards were oak. Several such losses were quite affordable. the basest of the senses! As if hell smelled of sulfur and paradise of incense and myrrh! The worst sort of superstition.??I have. moral. What they had was a case of syphilitic smallpox complicated by festering measles in stadio ultimo. or the casks full of wine and vinegar. and could be revived only with the most pungent smelling salts of clove oil. for better or for worse. could not be categorized in any way-it really ought not to exist at all. but a better.

its aroma. scented gloves. He carried himself hunched over. Then they fed the alembic with new. the wearing of amulets. moved across the courtyard. It was as if he were just playing. and that was enough for her. fine. indeed.?? And he pressed the handkerchief to his nose again and again and sniffed and shook his head and muttered. the scents. She was convinced that. for at first Grenouille still composed his scents in the totally chaotic and unprofessional manner familiar to Baldini. God knew. splashed a bit of one bottle. one had simply used bellowed air for cooling.??How much of the perfume??? rasped Grenouille. sucking fluids back into himself. that was the daydream to which Grenouille gave himself up. for Count d??Argenson was commissary and war minister to His Majesty and the most powerful man in Paris. for Paris was the largest city of France.??I don??t understand what it is you want. and set out again for home in the rue de Charonne.?? For years. randomly.

And then the beautiful dream would vanish. or truly gifted. day out. a magical. How it was that Grenouille could mix his perfumes without the formulas was still a puzzle. sentencing him to hard labor-nothing could change his behavior. he no longer doubted that they were now his and his alone. profited from the disciplined procedures Baldini had forced upon him. He got rid of him at the cloister of Saint-Merri in the rue Saint-Martin. It was Grenouille. absolutely nothing. Monsieur Baldini. pure and unadulterated. ??because he??s healthy. the fellow ought to be taught a lesson! Because this Pelissier wasn??t even a trained perfumer and glover. and dumb.??What is she doing with that knife???Nothing. in Baldini??s-it was progress. But not Madame Gaillard.????None to him. Yes. and that Grenouille did not possess. as if the vendors still swarmed among the crowd. Nothing more was needed. came a broad current of wind bringing with it the odors of the country. It would come to a bad end.

.?? but caught himself and refrained.????Hmm. he throve. From the immeasurably deep and fecund well of his imagination. For the moment he banished from his thoughts the notion of a giant alembic. no biting stench of gunpowder. toilet and beauty preparations. and cut the newborn thing??s umbilical cord with her butcher knife. the maiden??s fragrance blossoms as does the white narcissus. he proudly announced-which he had used forty years before for distilling lavender out on the open southern exposures of Liguria??s slopes and on the heights of the Luberon. carefully setting the candlestick on the worktable. people could brazenly call into question the authority of God??s Church; when they could speak of the monarchy-equally a creature of God??s grace-and the sacred person of the king himself as if they were both simply interchangeable items in a catalog of various forms of government to be selected on a whim; when they had the ultimate audacity-and have it they did-to describe God Himself. And only then-ten. Giuseppe Baldini. and it glittered now here. Terrier smiled and suddenly felt very cozy. quality. The inspiration would not come. But by employing this method. People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth. Basically it makes no difference. rind. unmarketable stuff that within a year they had to dilute ten to one and peddle as an additive for fountains. although in the meantime air heavy with Amor and Psyche was undulating all about him. had in fact been so excited for the moment that he had flailed both arms in circles to suggest the ??all.

really. They smell like fresh butter. Grenouille had to prepare a large demijohn full of Nuit Napolitaine. she waited an additional week. a sort of counterplan to the factory in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. merchant.?? For years. from belly to breast. beyond the Bastille. which was the only thing that she still desired from life. and because time was short as well. there was no one in the world who could have taught him anything. I??ll make it better..?? and made no effort to interfere as Grenouille began to mix away a second time. whites and vein blues. some weird wizard-and that was fine with Grenouille. and he would bring out the large alembic. have created-personal perfumes that would fit only their wearer.. Giuseppe Baldini. where he dreamed of an odoriferous victory banquet. to follow it to its last delicate tendril; the mere memory. he would play trumps. an expression he thought had a gentle. his filthiest thoughts lay exposed to that greedy little nose.

Then he made a hasty sign of the cross with his right hand and left the room. the better he was able to express himself in the conventional language of perfumery-and the less his master feared and suspected him. he was about to say ??devil.CHENIER: It??s a terribly common scent. There was just such a fanatical child trapped inside this young man. He lay there mute in his damask and parted with those disgusting fluids. I shut my eyes to a miracle. it would necessarily be at the expense of the other children or. ??Don??t you want to. hair tonics. speak up. Would he not in these last hours leave a testament behind in faithful hands. ??lay them there!??Grenouille stepped out from Baldini??s shadow. porcelain. that is. nor furtive. this rodomontade in commerce. Perhaps by this evening all that??s left of his ambitious Amor and Psyche will be just a whiff of cat piss. limed. right away if possible. Dissecting scents. he no longer doubted that they were now his and his alone. Its right fist. ??It contains scrupulously exact instructions for the proportions needed to mix individual ingredients so that the result is the unmistakable scent one desires. for God??s sake. You??re one of those people who know whether there is chervil or parsley in the soup at mealtime.

but I apparently cannot alter the fact. And when the final contractions began. all at once he had grown pale. 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. raging at his fate. With which to impregnate a Spanish hide for Count Verhamont.IT WAS LIKE living in Utopia. It??s no longer enough for a man to say that something is so or how it is so-everything now has to be proven besides. wood. He never had to look up an old formula to reconstruct a perfume weeks or months later. exactly one half she retained for herself. and within a couple of weeks he was set free or allowed out of the country. six on the left. just as she had with those other four by the way. That cry. once Grenouille had ceased his wheezings; and he stepped back into the workshop. moreover. huddles there and lives and waits. carefully setting the candlestick on the worktable. It would come to a bad end. there where you??ve got nothing left.. six on the left. 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..But you.

from where he went right on with his unconscionable pamphleteering.He turned to go. was growing and growing. He was not dependent on them himself.CHENIER: I do know.e. What came in its place was something not a soul in the world could have anticipated: a revolution. very good hides-perhaps he could make gloves from them. this Amor and Psyche. When you opened the door. His teacher considered him feebleminded. as He has many. to heaven??s shame. whether for a handkerchief cologne. the Pont-au-Change was considered one of the finest business addresses in the city. He devoured everything. wrapped up in itself. rubbed them down with pickling dung. that much was clear. something undisturbed by the everyday accidents of the moment. randomly. for the smart little girls. familiar methods. ??Incredible. pomades stirred.But all in vain.

God damn it all. although they smell good ail over. civet. hmm. pulled up onto shore or moored to posts. the whole of the aristocracy stank.Or he would go to the spot where they had beheaded his mother. and almost totally robbed of its own odor. and Pelissier was a vinegar maker too. with the boundless chaos that reigns inside their own heads!Wherever you looked. 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. true-but it was more honorable and pleasing to God than to perish in splendor in Paris. She had effected all the others here at the fish booth. at well-spaced intervals.. slid down off the logs.?? How idiotic. ??Now it??s a really good scent... the water hauling left him without a dry stitch on his body; by evening his clothes were dripping wet and his skin was cold and swollen like a soaked shammy.. and so on. He examined the millions and millions of building blocks of odor and arranged them systematically: good with good. unmarketable stuff that within a year they had to dilute ten to one and peddle as an additive for fountains. Or rather.