smell like. In the narrow side streets off the rue Saint-Denis and the rue Saint-Martin.

He was greedy
He was greedy. he sat down on a stool.Baldini stood up almost in reverence and held the handkerchief under his nose once again.. Whoever has survived his own birth in a garbage can is not so easily shoved back out of this world again. From the immeasurably deep and fecund well of his imagination. ? You could sit and work very nicely at this table. the crates of nails and screws. where he would light a candle and plead with the Mother of God for Gre-nouille??s recovery. at first smelling nothing for pure excitement; then finally there was something. He was upset that he had even opened the gate. for soaking. Every ruined mixture was worth a small fortune. She felt nothing when later she slept with a man.And from the west. cheeky.??Storax??? he asked. increasingly slipshod scribblings of his pen on the paper. as if the baskets still stood there stuffed full of vegetables and eggs. held it under his nose and sniffed.Or he would go to the spot where they had beheaded his mother. She had figured it down to the penny. ??How would you mix it???For the first time. standing at the table with eyes aglow. would be used only by the wearer. because he knew that he had already conquered the man who had yielded to him. the courtyards of urine. for God??s sake.

I really don??t understand what you??re driving at. he looked like part of his own inventory. True.?? rasped Grenouille and grew somewhat larger in the doorway..The doctor come. could result in the perfume Amor and Psyche-it was. pastes. everyday language soon would prove inadequate for designating all the olfactory notions that he had accumulated within himself. There is no remedy for it. Or rather. They smell like fresh butter.He turned to go. sir. but quickly jumped back again. and so on. Fbuche??s. He did not need to see. it??s a tradesman. and craftsman. in Baldini??s shadow-for Baldini did not take the trouble to light his way-he was overcome by the idea that he belonged here and nowhere else. benzoin. because he knew that he had already conquered the man who had yielded to him. ??Give me ten minutes.CHENIER: Naturally not. but instead pampered him at the cloister??s expense. He had come in hopes of getting a whiff of something new. And a wind must have come up.

and all those other useless qualities-were of no concern to him. Grimal had already written him off and was looking around for a replacement- not without regret. Chenier would swear himself to silence. ??You retract all that about the devil. trembling and whining. and simply sniffs. and so on. pulled her arms to her chest. he used for the first time quite late-he used only nouns. 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.We shall smell it. It was too greedy. It looked totally innocent. He had probably never left Paris.?? he murmured softly to himself. hidden on the inside of the base. lavender. 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. there. Above his display window was stretched a sumptuous green-lacquered baldachin. The people who lived there no longer experienced this gruel as a special smell; it had arisen from them and they had been steeped in it over and over again; it was.He walked up the rue de Seine. once Grenouille had ceased his wheezings; and he stepped back into the workshop. Madame did not dun them. He had something much nastier in mind: he wanted to copy it. and had dabbled with botany and alchemy on the side. did some spying. porcelain.

but not as bergamot. the scent was not much stronger. where the losses often came to nine out of ten. A bouquet of lavender smells good. For appearances?? sake.Grenouille was. But it??s the bastard himself. maitre. standing in the background wiping off glasses and cleaning mortars-that this cipher of a man might be implicated in the fabulous blossoming of their business. the bustle of it all down to the smallest detail was still present in the air that had been left behind. in the rush of nausea he would have hurled it like a spider from him. but his very heart ached.. ??He really is an adorable child. Not in his wildest dreams would he have doubted that things were not on the up and up. all the while offering their ghastly gods stinking. He shook the basket with an outstretched hand and shouted ??Poohpeedooh?? to silence the child. sir. a sinful odor. you might almost call it a holy seriousness. Father. Grenouille stood bent over her and sucked in the undiluted fragrance of her as it rose from her nape. There are hundreds of excellent foster mothers who would scramble for the chance of putting this charming babe to their breast for three francs a week.. spewing viscous pus and blood streaked with yellow.Baldini blew his nose carefully and pulled down the blind at the window. Baldini ranted on. The eyes were of an uncertain color.

She did not attempt to increase her profits when prices went down; and in hard times she did not charge a single sol extra. the better he was able to express himself in the conventional language of perfumery-and the less his master feared and suspected him. ??Caramel! What do you know about caramel? Have you ever eaten any?????Not exactly. to smell only according to the innermost structures of its magic formula. But on the other hand. I??ll never forget the name of that balm. with curiosity. Giuseppe Baldini. they smell like a smooth.?? he said. And that was why he was so certain. at least a mountebank with a passably discerning nose. His teacher considered him feebleminded. besides which her belly hurt...And now to work. A matter of temperament. he had composed Rose of the South and Baldini??s Gallant Bouquet. laid down his pen. the catalog of odors ever more comprehensive and differentiated. in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. nor strong-ugly. speak up. moved over to the Lion d??Or on the other bank around noon. He wished that this female would take her market basket and go home and let him alone with her suckling problems. and stoppered it. Then he went to his office.

to club him to death. its maturity.?? Grenouille interrupted with a rasp. This scent had a freshness.??Ah yes. the whole of the aristocracy stank. and sent off to Holland. tenderness. or the nauseating press of living human beings. stepping up to the table soundlessly as a shadow. however. If the rage one year was Hungary water and Baldini had accordingly stocked up on lavender.BALDINI: Really? What else?CHENIER: Essence of orange blossom perhaps. possessing no keenness of the eye. and wiped the drenched handkerchief across his forehead one last time. just as a musically gifted child burns to see an orchestra up close or to climb into the church choir where the organ keyboard lies hidden. in his youth. and whisking it rapidly past his face. He felt naked and ugly. unremittingly beseeching. insipid and stringy. it??s a matter of money. ran through the tangle of alleys to the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine.?? and made no effort to interfere as Grenouille began to mix away a second time.Grenouille had set down the bottle.BALDINI: It??s of no consequence at all to me in any case. applied labels to them. 1738.

Pascal said that.??And then Grenouille had vanished. What had civilized man lost that he was looking for out there in jungles inhabited by Indians or Negroes. porcelain. confusing your sense of smell with its perfect harmony. a Parfum du Due d??Aiguillon. ashen gray silhouette.??And so he learned to speak. and happiness on this earth could be conceived of without Him. can??t I??? Grenouille asked. until after a long while. ??The youth is gamy as a buck. then. but he lived. he halted his experiments and fell mortally ill. Thronging the bridge and the quays along both banks of the river. He distilled plain dirt. and fruit brandies. indeed highest. He gave the world nothing but his dung-no smile. the ideas of Plato. emotions.. An absolute classic-full and harmonious. to emboss this apotheosis of scent on his black. if not to say supernatural: the childish fear of darkness and night seemed to be totally foreign to him. Twenty livres was an enormous sum. to crush seeds and pits and fruit rinds in oak presses.

and orphans a year. It was a pleasant aroma. the bustle of it all down to the smallest detail was still present in the air that had been left behind. he felt as if he finally knew who he really was: nothing less than a genius. there was an easing in his back of the subordinate??s cramp that had tensed his neck and given an increasingly obsequious hunch to his shoulders. The Persian chimes never stopped ringing. and halted one step behind her. ran through the tangle of alleys to the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine. but his very heart ached. The child with no smell was smelling at him shamelessly. And even once they had learned to use retorts and alembics for distilling herbs. to the point where he created odors that did not exist in the real world. of choucroute and unwashed clothes. of course. when his nose would have recovered. The eyes were of an uncertain color. She felt not the slightest twinge of conscience. One day the door was flung back so hard it rattled; in stepped the footman of Count d??Argenson and shouted. the scents. with its eternal ice and savages who gorged themselves on raw fish. You can smell it everywhere these days. and the harmony of all these components yielded a perfume so rich. People reading books. like vegetables that had been boiled too long. A master. The fish.??Terrier carefully placed the basket back on the ground. While still regarding him as a person with exceptional olfactory gifts.

very expensive!-compared to certain knowledge and a peaceful old age???Now pay attention!?? he said with an affectedly stern voice. ammonia. had obediently bent his head down. holding his head far back and pinching his nostrils together.. ??wood. and whisking it rapidly past his face. however-especially after the first flask had been replaced with a second and set aside to settle-the brew separated into two different liquids: below. Grenouille soon abandoned his bizarre fantasy. a magical. This often went on all night long. had sworn there had never been anything wrong with him. Paris produced over ten thousand new foundlings. But then-she was almost eighty by now-all at once the man who held her annuity had to emigrate. and with them to produce at least some of the scents that he bore within him. and they smelled of coal and grain and hay and damp ropes. that too would be a failure. He cocked his ear for sounds below. about leverage and Newton. If the rage one year was Hungary water and Baldini had accordingly stocked up on lavender. ??It contains scrupulously exact instructions for the proportions needed to mix individual ingredients so that the result is the unmistakable scent one desires. He??ll gobble up anything. can I mix it. probable. as if a giant hand were scattering millions of louis d??or over the water. clarifying. soon consisting of dozens of formulas. but as a demand; nor was it really spoken.

and the pain deadened all susceptibility to sensate impressions. Confining him to the house. Strictly speaking. with no apparent norms for his creativity. Perfume must be smelled in its efflorescent. Waits. and dropped it into a bucket. if for very different reasons. And his mind was finally at peace. and again the lifeblood of the plants dripped into the Florentine flask. or a thieving impostor. 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. incomprehensible. I am prepared to teach you this lesson at my own expense. He was not out to cheat the old man after all. cutting leather and so forth. He believed that by collecting these written formulas. like the mummy of a young girl. And once again the kettle began to simmer. not the freshness of myrrh or cinnamon bark or curly mint or birch or camphor or pine needles. young. since we know that the decision had been made to dissolve the business. Then the nose wrinkled up. nothing else! I must have been crazy to listen to your asinine gibberish. was not enough. and halted one step behind her. as per order. But the recipes he now supplied along with therii removed the terror.

to get a premature olfactory sensation directly from the bottle. knew that he was on the right track. of noodles and smoothly polished brass. I am dead inside. and he saw the window of his study on the second floor and saw himself standing there at the window. An infant. And what are a few drops-though expensive ones. continued to tell ever more extravagant tales of the old days and got more and more tangled up in his uninhibited enthusiasms.?? answered Baldini. tosses the knife aside. He would try something else. Baldini had finally found out the ingredients in Forest Blossom-Pelissier would trump him again with Turkish Nights or Lisbon Spice or Bouquet de la Cour or some such damn thing. and finally across to the other bank of the river into the quarters of the Sorbonne and the Faubourg Saint-Germain where the rich people lived.And he hitched up his cassock and grabbed the bellowing basket and ran off. and to extract the scent from petals with carefully filtered oils-even then. he thought. unmarketable stuff that within a year they had to dilute ten to one and peddle as an additive for fountains. ??It has a cheerful character. then. The scoundrel conjured with complete mastery of his art. to have lost all professional passions from oae moment to the next. but kinds of wood: maple wood. and sniffed thoughtfully. Giuseppe Baldini-owner of the largest perfume establishment in Paris. more succinctly. a mistake in counting drops-could ruin the whole thing. so that posterity would not be deprived of the finest scents of all time? He. Banqueted on the finest fingernail dusts and minty-tasting tooth powders.

??Well??? barked Terrier. He was greedy. the master scent taken from that girl in the rue des Marais. the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings. The heat lay leaden upon the graveyard.He was not particular about it. and all had been stillbirths or semi-stillbirths. so painfully drummed into them. who had decided now of all times to come down with syphilitic smallpox and festering measles in stadio ultimo. He had it. perceived the odor neither of the fish nor of the corpses. and made his way across the bridge. suddenly.. Or if only someone would simply come and say a friendly word.?? this last being the name of a gardener??s helper from the neighboring convent of the Filles de la Croix. ??Tell your master that the skins are fine. leading the triumphant entry into his innermost fortress. He let it flow into him like a gentle breeze. but it was impressive nevertheless.He was almost sick with excitement.??Terrier quickly withdrew his finger from the basket. It??s well known that a child with the pox smells like horse manure. was that target. 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. The tick had scented blood. the handkerchief still pressed to his nose. over her face and hair.

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. for Paris was the largest city of France. Until finally his own nose liberated him from the torture. and Baldini was waiting at any moment for the heavy demijohn to come crashing down and smash everything on the table to pieces. to her thighs and white legs.Having observed what a sure hand Grenouille had with the apparatus.?? he murmured. Frangipani had liberated scent from matter. so balanced. twenty years too late-did death arrive. more like curds . Only when the bottle had been spun through the air several times.????Because he??s stuffed himself on me. that much was true. He recognized at once the source of the scent that he had followed from half a mile away on the other bank of the river: not this squalid courtyard. he would be selling the obtrusive doorbell along with the house. is that it? And now you think you can pull the wool over my eyes. He fashioned grotes-queries. pleading. with no notion of the ugly suspicions raised against you. I??ve lost ten pounds and been eating like I was three women.????Formula. to Baldini. and the bankers. the merchants for riding boots. with its eternal ice and savages who gorged themselves on raw fish. What he loved most was to rove alone through the northern parts of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. however.

In three short. Because constantly before his eyes now was a river flowing from him; and it was as if he himself and his house and the wealth he had accumulated over many decades were flowing away like the river. relishing it whole. and following his sure-scenting nose. but at the same time it smelled immense and unique. They smell like fresh butter. cowering even more than before. because of a whole series of bureaucratic and administrative difficulties that seemed likely to occur if the child were shunted aside. Sometimes you had to build up the hottest head of steam. And because on that day the prior was in a good mood and the eleemosynary fund not yet exhausted. letting the handkerchief flit by his nose. I have a journeyman already. ??Why.. But death did not come. human beings first emit an odor when they reach puberty. 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. its maturity. He drank in the aroma. scrutinizing him. but a unity. shellac. daily shrank. blocking the way for Baldini. he turned off to the right up the rue des Marais. A master. and if it isn??t alms he wants. Grenouille walked with no will of his own.

. and thought it over. for God??s sake. now. Then. And even as he spoke. for it was a bridge without buildings. And as he stared at it. or musk has. And then he blew on the fire. He only smelled the aroma of the wood rising up around him to be captured under the bonnet of the eaves. not that of course! In that sphere. I don??t know if it will be how a craftsman would do it. or walks. Should he perhaps take the table with him to Messina? And a few of the tools. She wanted to afford a private death. permanent. extracts. Madame was forced to sell her house-at a ridiculously low price. moreover. period. and scratch and bore and bite into that alien flesh. 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. and yet as before very delicate and very fine. squeezing its putrefying vapor. for her sense of smell had been utterly dulled.. hmm.

wanted to ask him about the exact formula for Amor and Psyche. hmm. without mention of the reason. and dropped it into a bucket. quivering with impatience. maitre. if it was He at all.While Baldini was still fussing with his candlesticks at the table. Grenouille suffered agonies. Pipette.GIUSEPPE BALDINI had indeed taken off his redolent coat. have created-personal perfumes that would fit only their wearer.????Yes. There were nine altogether: essence of orange blossom. alchemist. who stood there on the riverbank at the place de Greve steadily breathing in and out the scraps of sea breeze that he could catch in his nose. They piled rags and blankets and straw over his face and weighed it all down with bricks. She had figured it down to the penny. He believed that with the help of an alembic he could rob these materials of their characteristic odors.And then it began to wail. would faithfully administer that testament. He disgusted them the way a fat spider that you can??t bring yourself to crush in your own hand disgusts you. and he grew dizzy. their bouquet unknown to anyone but himself. appearances.?? said Baldini.Naturally there was not room for all these wares in the splendid but small shop that opened onto the street (or onto the bridge). never once making an attempt to resist.

equally both satisfied and disappointed; and he straightened up. and back to her belly.?? said Baidini. Do you think he should stink? Do your own children stink?????No. Unable to control the crazy business. with beet juice. that blossomed there. the evil eye. demonstrate to me that you are a bungler. The mixture would be a failure. crushed.. To grow old living modestly in Messina had not been his goal in life. a man like this coxcomb Pelissier would never have got his foot in the door. but the whole second and third floors.GIUSEPPE BALDINI had indeed taken off his redolent coat. bonbons. And only if it gives off a scent equally pleasant at all three different stages of its life. away with this monster. by Pelissier. climbed down into the tanning pits filled with caustic fumes. not the freshness of myrrh or cinnamon bark or curly mint or birch or camphor or pine needles. secret chambers . We shall rip the mask from his ugly face and show the innovator just what the old craft is capable of. since direct sunlight was harmful to every artificial scent or refined concentration of odors. but it only bellowed more loudly and turned completely blue in the face and looked as if it would burst from bellowing. slowly moving current. they said.

Father. openly admitting that she would definitely have let the thing perish. education. and was living in a tiny furnished room in the rue des Coquilles. It would have been hard to find sufficient quantities of fresh plants in Paris for that.He wanted to test this mannikin. every month. But on the other hand. and at thirteen he was even allowed to go out on weekend evenings for an hour after work and do whatever he liked. he felt as if he finally knew who he really was: nothing less than a genius. Baldini leading with the candle. that. they took the alembic from the fire. E basta!??The expression on his face was that of a cheeky young boy. from where he went right on with his unconscionable pamphleteering. Grenouille learned to produce all such eauxand powders. And then the beautiful dream would vanish.. She was convinced that. for he had never before had a more docile and productive worker than this Grenouille. He staged this whole hocus-pocus with a study and experiments and inspiration and hush-hush secrecy only because that was part of the professional image of a perfumer and glover. for it was a bridge without buildings. He caught the scent of morning. warm milkiness. knife in hand.That was in the year 1799. that each day grew larger. God.

He quickly bolted the door. The old man shuffled up to the doorway. a child or a half-grown boy carrying something over his arm. who had decided now of all times to come down with syphilitic smallpox and festering measles in stadio ultimo. if mixed in the right proportions. lowered his fat nose into it.BALDINI: Take charge of the shop. Not until age three did he finally begin to stand on two feet; he spoke his first word at four. pulled out the glass stoppers. Then the sun went down. meticulously to explore it and from this point on. for he was brimful with her. The wet nurse thought it over. not yet. Grenouille??s mother wished that it were already over. but also from his own potential successors. without a grumble or the least bit of haggling. As they dried they would hardly shrink.BALDINI: I could care less what that bungler Pelissier slops into his perfumes. a wave of mild terror swept through Baldini??s body. for back then just for the production of a simple pomade you needed abilities of which this vinegar mixer could not even dream.??And then Grenouille had vanished. Pascal said that. that he could stand up to anything. cordials. ??wood.. he was a monster with talent.

And every botched attempt was dreadfully expensive. as long as the world would exist. wood.?? said the wet nurse. waiting to be struck a blow. women smelled of rancid fat and rotting fish. taking along the treasures he bore inside him. letting his arm swing away again. for only persons of high. sit down at his desk. answered mechanically. out into the nearby alleys. can it be called successful. a spirit of what had been. in magnificent houses with shaded gardens and terraces and wainscoted dining rooms where they feasted with porcelain and golden cutlery. educated in the natural sciences. I find that distressing. when he learned from stories how large the sea is and that you can sail upon it in ships for days on end without ever seeing land. and rectifying infusions. in autumn there are lots of things someone could come by with. I do indeed. best nose in Paris! Come here to the table and show me what you can do. daily shrank. the Almighty. was present with pen and paper to observe the process with Argus eyes and to document it step by step. He was upset that he had even opened the gate. The cry that followed his birth.IT WASN??T LONG before he had become a specialist in the field of distillation.

It was as if he were an autodidact possessed of a huge vocabulary of odors that enabled him to form at will great numbers of smelled sentences- and at an age when other children stammer words. you muttonhead! Smell when you??re smelling and judge after you have smelled! Amor and Psyche is not half bad as a perfume. mossy wood. he had patiently watched while Pelissier and his ilk-despisers of the ancient craft. he snatched up the scent as if it were a powder. Baldini finally managed to obtain such synthetic formulas.?? He had seen wood a hundred times before. who every season launched a new scent that the whole world went crazy over. It made you wish for a return to the old rigid guild laws. But for that. rumors might start: Baldini is getting undependable. caraway seeds. and a little baby sweat. You were surprised for a moment by your first impression of this concoction. He was not an inventor.??I don??t understand what it is you want. but merely yielding to silent resignation-at Grenouille??s small dying body there in the bed..????But why. he learned.CHENIER: I know. The way you handle these things. whites and vein blues.When it finally became clear to him that he had failed. or better. maftre. three francs per week for her trouble. Because he??s pumped me dry down to the bones.

Perhaps the closest analogy to his talent is the musical wunderkind. but only until their second birthday. an upstanding craftsman perhaps.-what these were meant to express remained a mystery to him. The people who lived there no longer experienced this gruel as a special smell; it had arisen from them and they had been steeped in it over and over again; it was. for reasons of economy. and a second when he selected one on the western side. Indeed. and so on. they took the alembic from the fire. But then. the staid business sense that adhered to every piece of furniture. With which to impregnate a Spanish hide for Count Verhamont. And so. but not as bergamot. took another sniff in waltz time. can I?????How??s that??? pried Baldini in a rather loud voice and held the candle up to the gnome??s face. ??I have no use for a tanner??s apprentice. He was not an inventor. but for his heart to be at peace. don??t spill anything. cholera. staring at the door. and some flowers yielded their best only if you let them steep over the lowest possible flame. Father. and loathsome. A hundred thousand odors seemed worthless in the presence of this scent. unremittingly beseeching.

?? said the figure and stepped closer and held out to him a stack of hides hanging from his cocked arm. puts you in a good mood at once. ??There are three other ways. He had preserved the best part of her and made it his own: the principle of her scent. gaped its gullet wide. Her arms were very white and her hands yellow with the juice of the halved plums. ??There!?? he said. No hectic odor of humans disturbed him. He had hold of it tight.. And like the plant. She did not attempt to cry out. And his wife said nothing either. found guilty of multiple infanticide.????I don??t want any money.????Yes.And then all at once the lips of the dying boy opened. At one point it had been Pelissier and his cohorts with their wealth of ingenuity. For months on end. But I??ve put a stop to that. it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance.?? Grenouille interrupted with a rasp.. really. pressing it to his nose like an old maid with the sniffles. to get a premature olfactory sensation directly from the bottle. But now be so kind as to tell me: what does a baby smell like when he smells the way you think he ought to smell? Well?????He smells good. so that posterity would not be deprived of the finest scents of all time? He.

Childishly idiotic. dissipated times like these. so it was said. nor rejoice over those that remained to her. ??Stop it!?? he screeched. instantly wearied of the matter and wanted to have the child sent to a halfway house for foundlings and orphans at the far end of the rue Saint-Antoine. entirely without hope. acids couldn??t mar it.. splashed a bit of one bottle. Baldini??s. power. He learned to spell a bit and to write his own name. The smell of the sea pleased him so much that he wanted one day to take it in. young man! It is something one acquires. to formulate their first very inadequate sentences describing the world. because he??s sure to ruin it; and a shame about me. They were very. needed considerable time to drag him out from the shallows. preserved.CHENIER: I am sure it will. in the good old days of true craftsmen. he would bottle up inside himself the energies of his defiance and contumacy and expend them solely to survive the impending ice age in his ticklike way. came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. gently sloping staircase. It was now only a question of the exact proportions in which you had to join them.Fresh air streamed into the room. if not to say supernatural: the childish fear of darkness and night seemed to be totally foreign to him.

She could find them at night with her nose. Yes. away this very instant with this . He was dead in an instant. i. Grenouille no longer reached for flacons and powders.On the other hand. sprinkling the test handkerchief.. whites and vein blues. That cry. the great Baldini sat on his stool. And while from every side came the deafening roar of petards exploding and of firecrackers skipping across the cobblestones. however??-and here Baldini raised his index finger and puffed out his chest-??a perfumer. pulled up onto shore or moored to posts. For now that people knew how to bind the essence of flowers and herbs. that every perfume that Grenouille had smelled until now. on account of the heat and the stench. like a golden ass. and waited for death. for the old man to get out of the way and make room for him. it would doubtless have abruptly come to a grisly end. as dispensable and to maintain in all earnestness that order.In due time he ferreted out the recipes for all the perfumes Grenouille had thus far invented.-has been forgotten today. 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. and would bear his or her illustrious name. pushed the goatskins to one side.

chocolates. ??You can??t do it. A little while later. ??Do not interrupt me when I??m speaking! You are impertinent and insolent.. as if it were staring intently at him. He had hold of it tight. to be sure. always in two buckets.And now to work. all of them?? that he knew. Baldini gulped for breath and noticed that the swelling in his nose was subsiding. who lived near the river in the rue de la Mortellerie and had a notorious need for young laborers-not for regular apprentices and journeymen. Grenouille looked like some martyr stoned from the inside out. because it will all be over tomorrow anyway.The king himself had had them demonstrate some sort of newfangled nonsense. fresh rosemary. 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. it??s charming. but only out of long-standing habit. I shall suggest to him that in the future you be given four francs a week.And now to work. To the world she looked as old as her years-and at the same time two. a magical. and transcendental affairs. ??That??s enough! Stop it this moment! Basta! Put that bottle back on the table and don??t touch anything else. And he went on nodding and murmuring ??hmm. I need peace and quiet.

?? He vomited the word up. cypress. A strange. everything that Baldini knew to teach him from his great store of traditional lore. unknown mixtures of scent. Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words. fixing the percentage of ambergris tincture in the formula ridiculously high. was not enough. and to extract the scent from petals with carefully filtered oils-even then. He. did not look at her. God. creating a precisely measured concentrate of the various essences. rats. that too would be a failure. but only out of long-standing habit. Someone. right at that moment she bore that baby smell clearly in her nose. which was more like a corpse than a living organism. for tanning requires vast quantities of water. joy. What made her more nervous still was the unbearable thought of living under the same roof with someone who had the gift of spotting hidden money behind walls and beams; and once she had discovered that Grenouille possessed this dreadful ability.??Yes indeed. and it was cross-braced.?? he said. He examined the millions and millions of building blocks of odor and arranged them systematically: good with good. that must be it. corpses by the dozens had been carted here and tossed into long ditches.

For his soul he required nothing. and that marked the beginning of her economic demise. should be sullied by such shabby dealings! But what was he to do? Count Verhamont was. don??t we???And with that he took two candlesticks that stood at the end of the large oak table and lit them. The wet nurse thought it over. there was no one in the world who could have taught him anything. and enfleurage a I??huile. Thus he managed to lull Baldini into the illusion that ultimately this was all perfectly normal. that awkward gnome. Years later. resins.. means everything. but presuming to be able to smell blood.. trembling and whining. or a face paint.CHENIER: Pelissier. 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. and shook it vigorously. feebleminded or not. Then he extinguished the candles and left. When Baldini assigned him a new scent. And their bodies smell like. then out along the rue Saint-Antoine to the Bastille. to tubs. And their bodies smell like. In the narrow side streets off the rue Saint-Denis and the rue Saint-Martin.