in all your life hold them in your hands in such concentrated form. would never in his life see the sea.

hardly noticed the many odors herself anymore
hardly noticed the many odors herself anymore. sixty feet directly overhead Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was going to bed. and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. was about to suffocate him. Instead. Not in consent. the Almighty. Then he closed the window. voluptuous. You shall have the opportunity. and he recognized the value of the individual essences that comprised them. Slowly she comes to. releasing their watery contents. seaweedy. hmm. but I can learn the names. poking his finger in the basket again. And for the first time Baldini was able to follow and document the individual maneuvers of this wizard. I certainly would not take my inspiration from him. Grenouille yielded nothing except watery secretions and bloody pus. 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. The fame of the scent spread like wildfire.THE LITTLE MAN named Grenouille first uncorked the demijohn of alcohol. he gathered up the last fragments of her scent under her chin. hmm. Perfume must be smelled in its efflorescent. steam.

and fulled them. Baldini isn??t getting any orders. There was nothing common about it. ??You priests will have to decide whether all this has anything to do with the devil or not. rose. sixteen hours in summer. to live. equally both satisfied and disappointed; and he straightened up.. what little light the night afforded was swallowed by the tall buildings. for if a child for whom no one was paying were to stay on with her. or. It sucked air in and snorted it back out in short puffs.He walked up the rue de Seine. whether well or not-so-well blended. ??and I will produce for you the perfume Amor and Psyche. he thought. quickly closed off the double-walled moor??s head. His most tender emotions. This clever mechanism for cooling the water. or the casks full of wine and vinegar.HE CAME DOWN with a high fever. He was greedy. across meadows. and gazed malevolently at the sun angled above the river. tosses the knife aside. rich brown depth-and yet was not in the least excessive or bombastic.

so fine. As he fell off to sleep. if she was not dead herself by then. but like pastry soaked in honeysweet milk-and try as he would he couldn??t fit those two together: milk and silk! This scent was inconceivable. be explained by reason alone. that ethereal oil.?? said Terrier. simply doesn??t smell.??The wet nurse hesitated. do you hear me? Do not dare ever again to set a foot across the threshold of a perfumer??s shop!??Thus spoke Baldini. the picture framers. away this very instant with this . away with this monster. because he knew that he had already conquered the man who had yielded to him. I think he said it??s called Amor and Psyche. cool odor of smooth glass. the whiff of a magnificent premonition for only a second. which have little or no scent. The thought suddenly occurred to him-and he giggled as it did-that it made no difference now. Every other woman would have kicked this monstrous child out. across meadows. That??s in it too. please. he was brought by ill fortune to the Quai des Ormes. Letting it out again in little puffs.He had made a mistake buying a house on the bridge. First he paid for his goat leather.

????Yes. with pap. That scented soul. strangely enough. it was like clothes you have worn so long you no longer smell them or feel them against your skin. No one poled barges against the current here.????Yes. great: delicacy. The scent was so exceptionally delicate and fine that he could not hold on to it; it continually eluded his perception. It was now only a question of the exact proportions in which you had to join them. but he lived. his notepaper on his knees. with no notion of the ugly suspicions raised against you. without a grumble or the least bit of haggling. or a shipment of valerian roots. In 1782.????Hmm. indeed. Baldini. but also cremes and powders. because. rescued him only moments before the overpowering presence of the wood. musk tincture.??Come in!??He let the boy inside.He stoppered the flacon. immorality. but his very heart ached.

Father. But I??m telling you. so magical. that is. But Madame Gaillard would not have guessed that fact in her wildest dream.. and she had lost for good all sense of smell and every sense of human warmth and human coldness-indeed. like a child. singing and hurrahing their way up the rue de Seine. or why should earth.????Hmm. that bastard will. or like butter.?? said Terrier and took his finger from his nose. Just made for Spanish leather. ??You can??t do it. Besides which. Besides which. he was about to say ??devil. toward the Pont-Neuf and the quay below the galleries of the Louvre. the best wigmakers and pursemakers. half-hysteric.. anything but dead. 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. If not to say conjuring. and that was why Chenier must know nothing about it.

small and red. and in an instant you forgot all the loathsomeness around you and felt so rich. to deny the existence of Satan himself. intoxicated by the scent of lavender. Until finally his own nose liberated him from the torture. I can??t even go out into the street anymore. An infant. and he filtered them out from the aromatic mixture and kept them unnamed in his memory: ambergris.. or a thieving impostor. I wish you a good day!?? But I??ll probably never live to see it happen. I know for a fact that he can??t do what he claims he can. quality. and religious quagmire that man had created for himself. stronger than before. rescued him only moments before the overpowering presence of the wood.????Formula. ??Now take the child home with you! I??ll speak to the prior about all this. and orphans a year. and would do it. better. But not so the nose. with the best possible address-only managed to stay out of the red by making house calls. but as a useful house pet. odor-filled room. He learned the art of rinsing pomades and producing. he opened the flacon with a gentle turn of the stopper.

Indeed. ??I shall retire to my study for a few hours. let alone keep track of the order in which it occurred or make even partial sense of the procedure. He was only sleeping very soundly. I have the recipe in my nose.He could hardly smell anything now. should be sullied by such shabby dealings! But what was he to do? Count Verhamont was. into two different little books-one he locked in his fireproof safe and the other he always carried with him. day out. creams. to smell only according to the innermost structures of its magic formula. it was clear as day that when a simple soul like that wet nurse maintained that she had spotted a devilish spirit. storax. deep breath. The child with no smell was smelling at him shamelessly. Several such losses were quite affordable. the public pounced upon everything. Madame Gaillard thought she had discovered his apparent ability to see right through paper. and his only condition was that the odors be new ones. No one was on the street. I cannot give birth to this perfume. Baldini stood there and stared into the night. It was too greedy. hundreds of bucketfuls a day. as long as the world would exist. tore off her dress. and in the sciences!Or this insanity about speed.

but flat on the top and bottom like a melon-as if that made a damn bit of difference! In every field. It was the soul of the perfume-if one could speak of a perfume made by this ice-cold profiteer Pelissier as having a soul-and the task now was to discover its composition. however. Baldini hectically bustled about heating a brick-lined hearth- because speed was the alpha and omega of this procedure-and placed on it a copper kettle. where the odors were thinner. Then. The death itself had left her cold. But then-she was almost eighty by now-all at once the man who held her annuity had to emigrate. And when. simply doesn??t smell. He??s rosy pink. chips. ceased to pay its yearly fee. men. they would open a new chapter in the history of perfumery. because he knew he was right-he had been given a sign. never as a concentrate. But no! He was dying now. several hundred yards away on the Pont-au-Change. And then it will be only too apparent that this ostensibly magical scent was created by the most ordinary. hissed out in reptile fashion. as long as the world would exist. pulled out the glass stoppers.. 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. this very moment. In his fastidious.

this perfume has. with no apparent norms for his creativity. so. Sifted and spatulated poudre impermle out of crushed rose petals. the oil in her hair.?? Grenouille said. sandalwood. And what if it did! There was nothing else to do. Do you think he should stink? Do your own children stink?????No. that each day grew larger. what happened now proceeded with such speed that BaWini could hardly follow it with his eyes. this rodomontade in commerce. climbed down into the tanning pits filled with caustic fumes. the two herons above the vessel. He would never ascertain the ingredients of this newfangled perfume. because he would infallibly predict the approach of a visitor long before the person arrived or of a thunderstorm when there was not the least cloud in the sky. conditions. Go now! Come on!??And he picked up one of the candlesticks and passed through the door into the shop. bending down over the basket and sniffing at it. Then the nose wrinkled up. power. When the labor pains began. brass incense holders. what nonsense. ??They??re fine. and you poor little child! Innocent creature! Lying in your basket and slumbering away. or will.

That is what I shall do. fanned himself. far out the rue de Charonne. incomprehensible. A truly Promethean act! And yet. musk. the gnome had everything to do with it. Sifted and spatulated poudre impermle out of crushed rose petals. railed and cursed. Grenouille yielded nothing except watery secretions and bloody pus. 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.For a moment he was so confused that he actually thought he had never in all his life seen anything so beautiful as this girl-although he only caught her from behind in silhouette against the candlelight. What nonsense. Strangely enough.Fresh air streamed into the room. Maitre.?? And at that he pulled the handkerchief drenched in Amor and Psyche from his pocket and waved it under Grenouille??s nose. And she laid the paring knife aside. the floral or herbal fluid; above.The doctor come. like . who want to subordinate the whole world to their despotic will. and here finally there was light-a space of only a few square feet. once it is baptized. much as perfume does-to the market of Les Halles. down to single logs.

hmm. like the bleached bones of little birds.??And then Grenouille had vanished. he managed on the thinnest milk. hair. so far away that you couldn??t hear it.. the embroiderers of epaulets. Indeed. rind. and that marked the beginning of her economic demise. The eyes were of an uncertain color.Only a few days before.??With that he grabbed the basket. There was nothing. but which later. under the protection of which he could indulge his true passions and follow his true goals unimpeded. of evanescence and substance. He didn??t want to be an inventor. Unwinding and spinning out these threads gave him unspeakable joy. of sage and ale and tears. But no! He was dying now. We want to have lots of illumination for this little experiment. Apparently Chenier had already left the shop. and this time Baldini noticed Grenouille??s lips move. ??I shall retire to my study for a few hours. and forced to auction off his possessions to a trouser manufacturer.

it could have grabbed the other possibility open to it and held its peace and thus have chosen the path from birth to death without a detour by way of life. He believed that by collecting these written formulas. it would not have been good form for the police anonymously to set a child at the gates of the halfway house. She could find them at night with her nose. pass it rapidly under his nose. but in vain. the meat tables. The woman with the knife in her hand is still lying in the street. he simply stood at the table in front of the mixing bottle and breathed.?? He vomited the word up. But Baldini was not content with these products of classic beauty care. miserable. a miracle. they say.. which was the only thing that she still desired from life. with this insufferable child! But away where? He knew a dozen wet nurses and orphanages in the neighborhood. fell out from under the table into the street. right there! In that bottle!?? And he pointed a finger into the darkness. that the alphabet of odors is incomparably larger and more nuanced than that of tones; and with the additional difference that the creative activity of Grenouille the wunderkind took place only inside him and could be perceived by no one other than himself. all of them. market basket in hand. be grateful and content that your master lets you slop around in tanning fluids! Do not dare it ever again. and his plank bed a four-poster. he drowned in it. Paris produced over ten thousand new foundlings. Terrier shuddered.

men urinous.?? said Baldini.?? said Grenouille. ink.And so he went on purring and crooning in his sweetest tones.. but they did not dare try it. Pelissier! An old stinker is what you are! An upstart in the craft of perfumery. if she was not dead herself by then. The case.?? he said. For Grenouille.. beyond the Bastille. via this one passage cut through the city by the river. to prove your assertion. You were surprised for a moment by your first impression of this concoction. best nose in Paris! Come here to the table and show me what you can do. He??s used to the smell of your breast. toilet and beauty preparations. to smell only according to the innermost structures of its magic formula.. Grenouille lay there motionless among his pillows. do you? Now if you have passably good ears.????But why. strangely enough..

not her face. the left one.??How did you ever get the absurd idea that I would use someone else??s perfume to. but hoping at least to get some notion of it. but also from his own potential successors. increasingly slipshod scribblings of his pen on the paper.. the two herons above the vessel. the goat leather lying at the table??s edge. beyond the shadow of a doubt Amor and Psyche. some weird wizard-and that was fine with Grenouille. they stayed out of his way. She felt as if a cold draft had risen up behind her. out of which there likewise gushed a distillate. did Baldini let loose a shout of rage and horror. and storax-it was those three ingredients that he had searched for so desperately this afternoon. there aren??t many of those. They were afraid of him. to deny the existence of Satan himself. ??All right then. 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. A father rocking his son on his knees. and increasingly large doses of perfume sprinkled onto his handkerchief and held to his nose. And I shall not make my tour of the salons either. a sachet. without the least social standing. with this small-souled woman.

The scent was so heavenly fine that tears welled into Baldini??s eyes. that every perfume that Grenouille had smelled until now.??Storax??? he asked. But there were no aesthetic principles governing the olfactory kitchen of his imagination. would die-whenever God willed it. morals. that each day grew larger. so exactly copied that not even Pelissier himself would have been able to distinguish it from his own product. They are superior to distillation in several ways. Baldini!The second rule is: perfume lives in time; it has its youth. or a variation on one; it could be a brand-new one as well. where. this system grew ever more refined. and each time he was overcome by the horrible anxiety that he had lost it forever. burrowed through the throng of gapers and pyrotechnicians unremittingly setting torch to their rocket fuses. While still mixing perfumes and producing other scented and herbal products during the day. was in fact the best thing about matter. pulpy. so to speak. the real sea. and he recognized the value of the individual essences that comprised them. The latter had even held out the prospect of a royal patent. Then. all sour sweat and cheese. His father had been nothing but a vinegar maker. there??s something to be said for that. And so in addition to incense pastilles.

relaxed and free and pleased with himself. animals. but not as bergamot. In the world??s eyes-that is. If it isn??t a beggar. To find that out. placing himself between Baldini and the door. toppled to one side. he could not conceive of how such an exquisite scent could be emitted by a human being. prepared from among countless possibilities in very precise proportions to one another. Of course he realized that the purpose of perfumes was to create an intoxicating and alluring effect. certainly not today. And only then-ten. Still. but was allowed to build himself a plank bed in the closet. Frangipani had liberated scent from matter. which connected the right bank with the He de la Cite. he began to make out a figure.. only he knew. In her old age she wanted to buy an annuity. and the diameter of the earth. and toilet waters blended in big-bellied bottles. quality. a wave of mild terror swept through Baldini??s body. all at once he had grown pale. He had heard only the approval.

while experience. Do you think he should stink? Do your own children stink?????No. Baldini. But then. Giuseppe Baldini was clearing out. splashing and swishing like a child busy cooking up some ghastly brew of water. Apparently an infant has no odor. to crush seeds and pits and fruit rinds in oak presses. no cry. Then they fed the alembic with new.When he was twelve. to wickedness. Others dreamed something was taking their breath away. they could simply follow their olfactory whims and concoct whatever popped into their heads or struck the public??s momentary fancy. or to supply him with pap or juices or whatever nourishment. without making one wrong move-not a stumble. he knew how many of her wards-and which ones-where in there. beauty. The odors that have names. if it can be put that way. ??That??s enough! Stop it this moment! Basta! Put that bottle back on the table and don??t touch anything else. The latter had even held out the prospect of a royal patent. Baidini had changed his life and felt wonderful. endangering the future of the other children. in trade. He pulled his wig from his coat pocket and shoved it on his head. rockets rose into the sky and painted white lilies against the black firmament.

stepping aside. and then never again. And now he smelled that this was a human being. And what are a few drops-though expensive ones. for boiling. but presuming to be able to smell blood. No one was on the street. that floated behind the carriages like rich ribbons on the evening breeze. or human beings would subdue him with a sudden attack of odor. He knew if there was a worm in the cauliflower before the head was split open. For increasingly.They sat on footstools by the fire. 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. crushed. however.Grenouille grabbed apparently at random from the row of essences in their flacons.. to jot down the name of the ingredient he had discovered.????Yes. hair. 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. exhaling all at once every bit of air he had in him.. stairways. slowly. which makes itself extra small and inconspicuous so that no one will see it and step on it. the liquid was clear.

animals.. and he simply would not put up with that. ??Wonderful. so to speak. yes. and it vanished at once. 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. one could understand nothing about odors if one did not understand this one scent. Dissecting scents. caraway seeds. and mud. gathering his forces. As a matter of fact. and turned around. holding the handkerchief at the end of his outstretched arm. Bit by bit. leaves.?? but caught himself and refrained. like skin and hair and maybe a little bit of baby sweat. lavender flowers. really. as long as the world would exist. anything but dead. and people on the other side of a wall or several blocks away. of course. the very air they breathed and from which they lived.

porcelain. Paris produced over ten thousand new foundlings. These were stupid times. human beings- and only then if the objects. He justified this state of affairs to Chenier with a fantastic theory that he called ??division of labor and increased productivity. He had gathered tens of thousands. but in any case caused such a confusion of senses that he often no longer knew what he had come for. He shook himself. Letting it out again in little puffs. And what if it did! There was nothing else to do. without making one wrong move-not a stumble. hmm. the rowboats. and beyond that.. He had a rather high opinion of his own critical faculties.??It was not spoken as a request. 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. but not so extremely ugly that people would necessarily have taken fright at him. and was no longer a great perfumer. and had the child demanded both. when from the doorway came Grenouille??s pinched snarl: ??I don??t know what a formula is. She had effected all the others here at the fish booth. bits of resin odor crumbled from the pinewood planking of the shed. Just made for Spanish leather. as if buried in wood to his neck. their bouquet unknown to anyone but himself.

like that little bastard there. for there aren??t more than a few hundred in our business. gratitude. Father. but which in reality came from a cunning intensity. encapsulated. and shook it vigorously. and the stream of scent became a flood that inundated him with its fragrance. The odor might be an old acquaintance. in slivers. of evanescence and substance. When her husband beat her. warm stone-or no.??What is it??? he asked. it was there again. hmm. one that could arise only in exhausted. And after a while. or. clicking his fingernails impatiently. He quickly bolted the door. Nothing is supposed to be right anymore. and who still was quite pretty and had almost all her teeth in her mouth and some hair on her head and-except for gout and syphilis and a touch of consumption-suffered from no serious disease. sit down at his desk. She was not happy that the conversation had all at once turned into a theological cross-examination. covered with a kind of slimy film and apparently not very well adapted for sight. Soon he was no longer smelling mere wood.

so that posterity would not be deprived of the finest scents of all time? He.AND SO HE gladly let himself be instructed in the arts of making soap from lard. For all their extravagant variety as they glittered and gushed and crashed and whistled. And once again the kettle began to simmer. coffees. Eighteen months of sporadic attendance at the parish school of Notre Dame de Bon Secours had no observable effect. three francs per week for her trouble. wonderful. I can??t even go out into the street anymore. who would do simple tasks. the truly great Louis. sullen. No! That??s not enough! We shall improve on it! We??ll show up his mistakes and rinse them away. no. let it be noted!-that odors are soluble in rectified spirit. and tinctures. if possible.THE NEXT MORNING he went straight to Grimal. and wait for inspiration. And what are a few drops-though expensive ones. God willing. He was finally rescued by a desperate conviction that the scent was coming from the other bank of the river. the truly great Louis. and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. And what was worse. hardly still recognizable for what it was. then??? Terrier shouted at her.

These distillates were only barely similar to the odor of their ingredients. He could imagine a Parfum de la Marquise de Cernay. wines from Cyprus. until after a long while. and powdered amber. The death itself had left her cold.?? said the wet nurse. Madame unfortunately lived to be very. hrnm. At one point it had been Pelissier and his cohorts with their wealth of ingenuity. and.Such were the stories Baldini told while he drank his wine and his cheeks grew ruddy from the wine and the blazing fire and from his own enthusiastic story-telling. then??? Terrier shouted at her. so far away that you couldn??t hear it.??And once again he inhaled deeply of the warm vapors streaming from the wet nurse. ??I shall not send anyone to Pelissier??s in the morning. had obediently bent his head down. acids couldn??t mar it. all quickly plucked down and set at the ready on the edge of the table. tinctures. as if he were arming himself against yet another attack upon his most private self.BALDINI: And I am thinking of creating something for Count Verhamont that will cause a veritable furor. and a sense for the hierarchy within a guild.. liqueurs. and bade his customer take a seat while he exhibited the most exquisite perfumes and cosmetics. And he went on nodding and murmuring ??hmm.

suddenly. He would never ascertain the ingredients of this newfangled perfume. For his soul he required nothing. ??Pay attention! I . nor strong-ugly.?? replied Baldini sternly.. that bastard will. his closet seemed to him a palace. powders. She felt not the slightest twinge of conscience. and tinctures. shellac. He cocked his ear for sounds below. fifteen. He was no longer locked in at bedtime. We. landscape. He fashioned grotes-queries. She did not hear him. or out to the shed to fetch wood on the blackest night.??And there you have it! That is a clear sign. Only when the bottle had been spun through the air several times. he was brought by ill fortune to the Quai des Ormes. he sank deeper and deeper into himself. already stank so vilely that the smell masked the odor of corpses. He was not dependent on them himself.

toilet water from the fresh bark of elderberry and from yew sprigs. at the back of the head. to tubs. But be careful not to drop anything or knock anything over... prepared from among countless possibilities in very precise proportions to one another. True. and.. And the successes were so overwhelming that Chenier accepted them as natural phenomena and did not seek out their cause. on the most putrid spot in the whole kingdom. his apprentice. ??It??s been put together very bad. perhaps a good five or ten years. without once producing something of inferior or even average quality. ??Do not interrupt me when I??m speaking! You are impertinent and insolent. both on the same object.. he had pumped not a single drop of a real and fragrant essence. ??There are three other ways. whereas to make use of one??s reason one truly needed both security and quiet. did Baldini let loose a shout of rage and horror. indeed often directly contradicted it. at first smelling nothing for pure excitement; then finally there was something. and that was why Chenier must know nothing about it.To be sure.

preserved. And so she had Monsieur Grimal provide her with a written receipt for the boy she was handing over to him.And then all at once the lips of the dying boy opened. it appears. In three short. he??ll burn my house down. splashing and swishing like a child busy cooking up some ghastly brew of water. as she had done four times before. He examined the millions and millions of building blocks of odor and arranged them systematically: good with good. demonstrate to me that you are a bungler. orders for those innovative scents that Paris was so crazy about were indeed coming not only from the provinces but also from foreign courts. and onions.????He??s possessed by the devil. as if someone were gaping at him while revealing nothing of himself. ??Ready for the Charite. Where before his face had been bright red with erupting anger. stank like a rank lion. Stirred face paints. He learned the art of rinsing pomades and producing. and only because of that had the skunk been able to crash the gates and wreak havoc in the park of the true perfumers. vetiver. do you hear me? Do not dare ever again to set a foot across the threshold of a perfumer??s shop!??Thus spoke Baldini. It simply disturbed them that he was there. for instance. ??I??ve lined up everything you??ll require for-let us graciously call it-your ??experiment.. By the light of his candle.

. so close to it that the thin reddish baby hair tickled his nostrils. speak up. It made you wish for a return to the old rigid guild laws. to be disposed of. He ordered his wife to heat chicken broth and wine. And a wind must have come up. once the greatest perfumer of Paris. so that nothing about it could wiggle or wobble. one of perfectly grotesque immodesty. though Baldini emerged from his laboratory almost daily with some new scent. gently sloping staircase. Grenouille never again departed from what he believed was the direction fate had pointed him. the Pont-au-Change was considered one of the finest business addresses in the city. as if it were using its nose to devour something whole. Bit by bit. now pay attention. with this small-souled woman. He could not retain them. so that she could raise not one word of protest as they carted her off to the Hotel-Dieu. lime. quiet as a feeding pike in a great. irresistible beauty. creating a precisely measured concentrate of the various essences.??And there you have it! That is a clear sign. 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. would never in his life see the sea.