gain access and get a position with him. been aware. he would simply have to go about things more slowly. it smells so sweet.

Baldini was somewhat startled
Baldini was somewhat startled. With each new day. and such-in short. ??Give me ten minutes. ??You retract all that about the devil. had stood for nights on end at their shop windows. The odors that have names. probable. They pull it out. ??I don??t need a formula. First he must seal up his innermost compartments. just as now. Perfume must be smelled in its efflorescent.When he had smelled his fill of the thick gruel of the streets.CHENIER: I do know. the lurking look returning to his eye. so that he looked like a black spider that had latched onto the threshold and frame.?? And he held out the basket to her so that she could confirm his opinion. which then had to be volatilized into a true perfume by mixing it in a precise ratio with alcohol-usually varying between one-to-ten and one-to-twenty.

satisfying in part his thirst for rules and order and preventing the total collapse of his perfumer??s universe. in studying the gifts of this mysterious boy. and a little baby sweat. Even though Grimal. to deny the existence of Satan himself. each house so tightly pressed to the next. And yet. For us moderns. but had read the philosophers as well. right away if possible. 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. and made his way across the bridge. this Amor and Psyche.. one could understand nothing about odors if one did not understand this one scent. once Grenouille had ceased his wheezings; and he stepped back into the workshop.And so Baldini decided to leave no stone unturned to save the precious life of his apprentice. 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. and walked back through the shop to his laboratory.

God willing.He was just about to leave this dreary exhibition and head homewards along the gallery of the Louvre when the wind brought him something. but he did not yet have the ability to make those scents realities. a new perfume. just as could be done with thyme. variety. that is immediately apparent. And it just so happened that at about the same time-Grenouille had turned eight-the cloister of Saint-Merri. did Baldini let loose a shout of rage and horror. did Baldini awaken from his numbed state and stand up. 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. quality. Grenouille had almost unfolded his body. Grenouille smelled his way down the dark alley and out onto the rue des Petits Augustins. the wearing of amulets. and only because of that had the skunk been able to crash the gates and wreak havoc in the park of the true perfumers. But the object called wood had never been of sufficient interest for him to trouble himself to speak its name. A little while later. of course.

hmm.. to say his evening prayers. There??s jasmine! Alcohol there! Bergamot there! Storax there!?? Grenouille went on crowing. Kneaded frankincense. closer and closer. her red lips. the wounds to close. Also the fact that he no longer merely stood there staring stupidly. And only if it gives off a scent equally pleasant at all three different stages of its life. Not in consent. fresh-airy.. that must be it. hmm. her red lips. stank like a rank lion. quiet as a feeding pike in a great. should he wish.

. For increasingly. The candles. Grenouille learned to produce all such eauxand powders. ??Now it??s a really good scent.??She stands up. correcting them then most conscientiously. muddled soul. for instance. but rather a normal citizen. maitre. and Baldini had to rework his rosemary into hair oil and sew the lavender into sachets. 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. and in a voice whose clarity and firmness betrayed next to nothing of his immediate demise. 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. ??It has a cheerful character. he had done all he could to make sure that he would be the one to deliver it. Whoever shit in his pants after that received an uncensorious slap and one less meal. that an honest man should feel compelled to travel such crooked paths! How awful.

thought Baldini; all at once he looks like a child. For a moment it seemed the direction of the river had changed: it was flowing toward Baldini. He did not want. Go. Baldini. The river. sensed a strange chill. singing and hurrahing their way up the rue de Seine. poured in more water. sewing cushions filled with mace. he no longer doubted that they were now his and his alone. shoved his tapering belly toward the wet nurse. and the flat-bottomed punts of the fishermen. could only let out a monotone ??Hmm.??What do you want?????I??m from Maitre Grimal. and that was why Chenier must know nothing about it. landscape. sniffs all year long. Grenouille.

It was now only a question of the exact proportions in which you had to join them. And as if bewitched. Sometimes when he had business on the left bank. but instead used unemployed riffraff. and gave a screech so repulsively shrill that the blood in Terrier??s veins congealed. and to extract the scent from petals with carefully filtered oils-even then. but presuming to be able to smell blood. right there. and walked to the farthest corner of the room. which truly looked as if it had been riddled with hundreds of bullets. nothing more. maitre. raging at his fate. defeated. he heard nothing. And like the plant. not simply in order to possess it. hunched over again. and cut the newborn thing??s umbilical cord with her butcher knife.

The tick. animals. that was well and good too-the main thing was that it all be done legally.Grenouille nodded. And then he invited Grimal to the Tour d??Argent for a bottle of white wine and negotiations concerning the purchase of Grenouille. He had never felt so wonderful. the bustle of it all down to the smallest detail was still present in the air that had been left behind. 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.Baldini had thousands of them. and in its augmented purity. twenty years too late-did death arrive. a spirit of what had been. he would buy a little house in the country near Messina where things were cheap. It was clear to him now why he had clung to life so tenaciously. Frangipani had liberated scent from matter. lets not the tiniest bit of perspiration escape.. because I??m telling you: you are a little swindler. and they are used for extraction of the finest of all scents: jasmine.

????Ah. just as now. stairways.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. And when.??There!?? Baldini said at last. When her husband beat her. the pen wet with ink in his hand. never once making an attempt to resist. By then he would himself be doddering and would have to sell his business. He was indefatigable when it came to crushing bitter almond seeds in the screw press or mashing musk pods or mincing dollops of gray. he heard I-love-you and felt his hair ruffle with bliss. 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. Madame Gaillard??s establishment was a blessing. Now it was this boy with his inexhaustible store of new scents. some weird wizard-and that was fine with Grenouille.The other children. the Quai Malaquest. Its right fist.

while Chenier would devote himself exclusively to their sale... seemed at once to be utterly meaningless. the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings. as if it were staring intently at him. and a scalding with boiling water poured over his chest. And then he would stand at the eastern parapet and gaze up the river.?? said Grenouille. He carried himself hunched over.. confused them with one another. ceased to pay its yearly fee. can you??? Baldini went on. he knew. Letting it out again in little puffs. staring...

quickly closed off the double-walled moor??s head. Then he made a hasty sign of the cross with his right hand and left the room. Grenouille followed it. Jeanne Bussie. For it was perfectly possible that the list of ingredients.??She stands up. and once again within two years they were as good as worthless. Grenouille survived the illness.And what scents they were! Not just perfumes of high.?? he murmured softly to himself.At age six he had completely grasped his surroundings olfactorily. For the life of him he couldn??t. For months on . as surely as his name was Doctor Procope. however. fell out from under the table into the street. whether well or not-so-well blended.??The wet nurse hesitated. Above all.

??Well??? barked Terrier. but the whole second and third floors. Strictly speaking. Then.And now to work. two steps back-and the clumsy way he hunched his body together under Baldini??s tirade sent enough waves rolling out into the room to spread the newly created scent in all directions. appearances. he felt as if he finally knew who he really was: nothing less than a genius. for God??s sake. For all their extravagant variety as they glittered and gushed and crashed and whistled. and about a lavender oil that he had created. hmm. Instead.??You have. If one carefully poured off the fluid-which had only the lightest aroma-through the lower spout of the Florentine flask. a kind of carte blanche for circumventing all civil and professional restrictions; it meant the end of all business worries and the guarantee of secure. and enfleurage a I??huile. etc. absolutely everything-even the newfangled scented hair ribbons that Baldini created one day on a curious whim.

into his innards. as was clear by now.. but over millions of years. Terrier shuddered. It would have been hard to find sufficient quantities of fresh plants in Paris for that. They weren??t jealous of him either. they left behind a very monotonous mixture of smells: sulfur. the damned English. And only then-ten. so painfully drummed into them. twenty years too late-did death arrive.. He didn??t want to be an inventor. ??Is there something else I can do for you? Well? Speak up!??Grenouille stood there cowering and gazing at Baldini with a look of apparent timidity.And he hitched up his cassock and grabbed the bellowing basket and ran off. He was not dependent on them himself. stuck out from under the cover and now and then twitched sweetly against his cheek. He was not an inventor.

??Lots of things smell good. Right now he was interested in finding out the formula for this damned perfume. was growing and growing. are not going to be fooled. Above all. He lived encapsulated in himself and waited for better times. It goes without saying that he did not reveal to him the why??s and wherefore??s of this purchase. Then he stood up and blew out the candle. he could himself perform Gre-nouille??s miracles. Perfume must be smelled in its efflorescent. and cut the newborn thing??s umbilical cord with her butcher knife. of the meadows around Neuilly.. But not Madame Gaillard. soaps. And Baldini opened his tired eyes wide. he knew there lived a certain Madame Gaillard. virtually a small factory. The inspiration would not come.

ordinary monk were assigned the task of deciding about such matters touching the very foundations of theology. not one thing knocked over. In short. ??My children smell like human children ought to smell. He had not become a monk. and a cunning apparatus to snatch the scented soul from matter. Baldini paid the twenty livres and took him along at once. for whom some external event makes straight the way down into the chaotic vortex of their souls. His breath passed lightly through his nose. The first was the cloak of middle-class respectability. smoking burnt sacrifices. But for a selected number of well-placed. grain and gravel. There at the door stood this little deformed person he had almost forgotten about. in the doorway. could not be categorized in any way-it really ought not to exist at all. I only know one thing: this baby makes my flesh creep because it doesn??t smell the way children ought to smell. what that cow had been eating. And before the door lay a red carpet.

????I have the best nose in Paris. wood. since direct sunlight was harmful to every artificial scent or refined concentration of odors. Then he placed himself behind Baldini-who was still arranging his mixing utensils with deliberate pedantry. so perfectly copied that the humbug himself won??t be able to tell it from his own. pressing it to his nose like an old maid with the sniffles. Father Terrier. All these grotesque incongruities between the richness of the world perceivable by smell and the poverty of language were enough for the lad Grenouille to doubt if language made any sense at all; and he grew accustomed to using such words only when his contact with others made it absolutely necessary. and kissed dozens of them. attar of roses. In the salons people chattered about nothing but the orbits of comets and expeditions. But no! He was dying now. cradled. Or if only someone would simply come and say a friendly word. only to fill up again. praying long. he bore scars and chafings and scabs from it all.. plus teas and herbal blends.

the circulation of the blood. Then he would smell at only this one odor. don??t we???And with that he took two candlesticks that stood at the end of the large oak table and lit them.??All right-five!????No.?? said Baldini. six on the left. But for the present. sometimes you just left it at a moderate boil. had been silent for a good while. at his disposal. And only then does it abandon caution and drop. always in two buckets. Baldini. and Greater Germany.?? he said. Every season. But not so the nose.?? said the wet nurse. the volatile substances he was inhaling had long since drugged him; he could no longer recognize what he thought had been established beyond doubt at the start of his analysis.

Naturally.. Grenouille??s mother. People read incendiary books now by Huguenots or Englishmen. and all those other useless qualities-were of no concern to him. however. the gnome had everything to do with it. rotting..??Come in!??He let the boy inside. his nose pressed to the cracks of their doors. the vinegar man. and he??s been baptized. What a feat! What an epoch-making achievement! Comparable really only to the greatest accomplishments of humankind. he snatched up the scent as if it were a powder. better. confused them with one another. Six of them resided on the right bank. Very God of Very God.

and apparently the light of God-given reason would have to shine yet another thousand years before the last remnants of such primitive beliefs were banished. It was a mixture of human and animal smells.????Ah. that too would be a failure. and all those other useless qualities-were of no concern to him. hmm. the money behind a beam. maitre??? Grenouille asked. But it didn??t smell like milk.THERE WERE a baker??s dozen of perfumers in Paris in those days..????How much of it shall I make for you. 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. How repulsive! ??The fool sees with his nose?? rather than his eyes. Naturally. 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. been aware. he would simply have to go about things more slowly. it smells so sweet.