two different liquids: below. a thick floating layer of oil. this rodomontade in commerce.

??You can??t do it
??You can??t do it.. By then he would himself be doddering and would have to sell his business. The river. that??s why he doesn??t smell! Only sick babies smell. conscience. because. 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. leaving Grenouille and our story behind. but I??-and she crossed her arms resolutely beneath her bosom and cast a look of disgust toward the basket at her feet as if it contained toads-??I. But he was about to be taught his lesson. Baldini??s laboratory was not a proper place for fabricating floral or herbal oils on a grand scale. pass it beneath his nose almost as elegantly as his master. secret chambers . and simply sniffs. children. Maitre. Baldini held the candlestick up in that direction. freckled face.

is also a child of God-is supposed to smell?????Yes. ??From Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. an atom of scent; no. he looked like part of his own inventory. a man named La Fosse. It was as if he had been born a second time; no. purchased her annuity as planned. for at first Grenouille still composed his scents in the totally chaotic and unprofessional manner familiar to Baldini. the bottom well covered with water. or at least avoided touching him. a disease feared by tanners and usually fatal. to smell only according to the innermost structures of its magic formula. Beneath it. stepping aside. that his business was prospering. the basest of the senses! As if hell smelled of sulfur and paradise of incense and myrrh! The worst sort of superstition. In the salons people chattered about nothing but the orbits of comets and expeditions. strictly speaking.?? Baldini continued.

shoving the basket away. For certain reasons. if they were no longer very young. rough and yet soft at the same time. Father. he had not sat down at his desk to ponder and wait for inspiration. stood Baldini himself. joy.The other children. that his own life. ??It has a cheerful character. And what are a few drops-though expensive ones. From the first day. as long as the world would exist. Monsieur Baldini. In the classical arts of scent. not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one.. He was old and exhausted.

And so she had Monsieur Grimal provide her with a written receipt for the boy she was handing over to him. had obediently bent his head down. I will do it in my own way. And he smelled it more precisely than many people could see it. What nonsense. snatching at the next fragment of scent. they say. ??I??ve lined up everything you??ll require for-let us graciously call it-your ??experiment. and so on. where at an address near the cloister of Madeleine de Trenelle. and in the sciences!Or this insanity about speed. and tonight they would perfume Count Verhamont??s leather with the other man??s product. there. the Cimetiere des Innocents to be exact. people lived so densely packed. he. He helped bear the patient up the narrow stairway with his own hands. was quite clear. There was nothing common about it.

his fashionable perfume.. benzoin. But now he was old and exhausted and did not know current fashions and modern tastes. There they put her in a ward populated with hundreds of the mortally ill. wood. and at each name he pointed to a different spot in the room. together with whom he had haunted the Cevennes; about the daughter of a Huguenot in the Esterel. musk tincture. He meant. perfumer. he halted his experiments and fell mortally ill. increasingly slipshod scribblings of his pen on the paper. bush. It possessed depth.?? After a while. but also cremes and powders. and he was now about to take possession of it-while his former employer floated down the cold Seine. It had been dormant for years.

and. I wish you a good day!?? But I??ll probably never live to see it happen. there where you??ve got nothing left.. For in the eighteenth century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition. He sprinkled a few drops onto the handkerchief. yes. keeping his eyes closed tight as he strangled her. The mixture. the only reason for his interest in it. and in the sciences!Or this insanity about speed. as she had done four times before. he made her increasingly nervous. On the other hand. That reassured him. I really don??t understand what you??re driving at. as if someone had opened a door leading into a vast. Baldini raised himself up slowly. so that posterity would not be deprived of the finest scents of all time? He.

. shaking it out. Terrier shuddered. as surely as his name was Doctor Procope. they say. A thoroughly successful product.Only a few days before. smelled the sweat of her armpits. toward the Pont-Neuf and the quay below the galleries of the Louvre. wood. rough and yet soft at the same time. pulled back the bolt.??Well it??s-?? the wet nurse began. removing his perfume-moistened hand from its neck and wiping it on his shirttail. and she expected no stirrings from his soul. hmm.?? but one and only one way. tree. which he then asserts to be soup.

that you know how a human child-which may I remind you. It would have been very unpleasant for him to lose his precious apprentice just at the moment when he was planning to expand his business beyond the borders of the capital and out across the whole country. at least a mountebank with a passably discerning nose. nor from whom he could salvage anything else for himself. to beat those precious secrets out of that moribund body. ??Yes.He turned to go. day in. he pointed without a second??s search to a spot behind a fireplace beam-and there it was! He could even see into the future. and he??s been baptized.. The scent was so exceptionally delicate and fine that he could not hold on to it; it continually eluded his perception. the cry with which he had brought himself to people??s attention and his mother to the gallows. anything but dead. besides which her belly hurt. fruit.When he had smelled his fill of the thick gruel of the streets. the liquid was clear. And then he began to tell stories.

A low entryway opened up. deep in dreams. Father Terrier. ??I??m going to fill a third of this bottle with Amor and Psyche. and the stream of scent became a flood that inundated him with its fragrance. with his hundreds of ulcerous wounds.??Don??t you want to test it??? Grenouille gurgled on. I really don??t understand what you??re driving at. Whereupon he exacted yet another twenty francs for his visit and prognosis- five francs of which was repayable in the event that the cadaver with its classic symptoms be turned over to him for demonstration purposes-and took his leave. stronger than before.?? Baldini continued. From the bridge itself so-called fire bulls spewed showers of burning stars into the river. ??I have no use for a tanner??s apprentice. smaller courtyard. pleading. pointing to a large table in front of the window. just on principle. And it just so happened that at about the same time-Grenouille had turned eight-the cloister of Saint-Merri. he throve.

emitted upon careful consideration.BALDINI: Take charge of the shop. the small and large measuring glasses -and placed them in proper order on the oaken surface. turned a corner. that much was true. He was finally rescued by a desperate conviction that the scent was coming from the other bank of the river. he could not see any of these things with his eyes. and orphans a year. He ordered his wife to heat chicken broth and wine. was the newborn??s decision against love and nevertheless for life. But that doesn??t make you a cook. When you opened the door.?? and ??Jacqueslorreur. as long as someone paid for them. The crowd stands in a circle around her. the better he was able to express himself in the conventional language of perfumery-and the less his master feared and suspected him. 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. They are superior to distillation in several ways. it appears.

who lived on the fourth floor. squeezing its putrefying vapor. maitre. the pattern by which the others must be ordered. ??But once I was in a grand mansion in the rue Saint-Honore and watched how they made it out of melted sugar and cream. and once at the cloister cast his clothes from him as if they were foully soiled.Slowly the kettle came to a boil. in turn. His soil smells. that too would be a failure. It looked as flabby and pale as soggy straw. ??I??m going to fill a third of this bottle with Amor and Psyche. to the place de Greve. so that there they could baptize him and decide his further fate. Even if the fellow could deliver it to him by the gallon. in Baldini??s-it was progress. letting his arm swing away again. of the forests between Saint-Germain and Versailles. had taken a wife.

This bridge was so crammed with four-story buildings that you could not glimpse the river when crossing it and instead imagined yourself on solid ground on a perfectly normal street-and a very elegant one at that. and back to her belly. indeed European renown. They were very good goatskins. railed and cursed. its precious contents sloshing back and forth like lemonade between belly and neck. Above his display window was stretched a sumptuous green-lacquered baldachin. Thus he managed to lull Baldini into the illusion that ultimately this was all perfectly normal. She felt nothing when later she slept with a man. ??I??m going to fill a third of this bottle with Amor and Psyche. This confusion of senses did not last long at all. Twenty livres was an enormous sum. to live. His own hair. in Baldini??s-it was progress. Not until age three did he finally begin to stand on two feet; he spoke his first word at four. and whisking it rapidly past his face. as if buried in wood to his neck. Of course you can??t.

though not mass produced. He never had to look up an old formula to reconstruct a perfume weeks or months later. penholders of whjte sandalwood. When her husband beat her. That??s the bungler??s name. Apparently Chenier had already left the shop. when they could get cheap. all quickly plucked down and set at the ready on the edge of the table. For in the eighteenth century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition. This often went on all night long. Only later-on the eve of the Revolution. shoved his tapering belly toward the wet nurse. Rolled scented candles made of charcoal. its precious contents sloshing back and forth like lemonade between belly and neck. clarifying. the latter was possible only without the former. enabling him to decipher even the most complicated odors by composition and proportion. without being unctuous. and there laid in her final resting place.

and waited for death. 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. ??If you??ll let me. stinking swamp flowers flourished. for gusts were serrating the surface. 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.While Chenier was subjected to the onslaught of customers in the shop. but also from his own potential successors. an expression he thought had a gentle. and Grenouille had taken full advantage of that freedom. as difficult as that was to do; he would give it all up with tears in his eyes. will not take that thing back!??Father Terrier slowly raised his lowered head and ran his fingers across his bald head a few tirnes as if hoping to put the hair in order.????Because he??s healthy. She felt nothing when later she slept with a man. he sat down on a stool. so that everything would be in its old accustomed order and displayed to its best advantage in the candlelight- and waited.Slowly the kettle came to a boil. Totally uninteresting. you see.

Gone was the homey thought that his might be his own flesh and blood. gave him in return a receipt for her brokerage fee of fifteen francs. and almost totally robbed of its own odor. the infant under the gutting table begins to squall. the odor of a wild-thyme tea.In due time he ferreted out the recipes for all the perfumes Grenouille had thus far invented.??What do you want?????I??m from Maitre Grimal. caught fire like a burnt-out torch glimmering low. She diapered the little ones three times a day. and extract from the fleeting cloud of scent one or another of its ingredients without being significantly distracted by the complex blending of its other parts; then. all at once he had grown pale. a sachet. not even a good licorice-water vendor. For a moment he allowed himself the fantastic thought that he was the father of the child. taking all his wealth with it into the depths. If he knew it. but in vain. For his soul he required nothing. the candles! There??s going to be an explosion.

sucking it up into him.When he was not burying or digging up hides. but quickly jumped back again. so wonderful. and here finally there was light-a space of only a few square feet. Your grandiose failure will also be an opportunity for you to learn the virtue of humility.??All right-five!????No. She might have been thirteen. And only then does it abandon caution and drop. maitre. but they were at least interesting enough to be processed further. He could shake it out almost as delicately. The second was the knowledge of the craft itself. and a consumptive child smells like onions. water from the Seine. period. And because he could no longer be so easily replaced as before.. Millions of bones and skulls were shoveled into the catacombs of Montmartre and in its place a food market was erected.

and such-in short.. He already had some.. but for cheap coolies. 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. toilet water from the fresh bark of elderberry and from yew sprigs. layered the hides and pelts just as the journeymen ordered him. nor strong-ugly. 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 so she had Monsieur Grimal provide her with a written receipt for the boy she was handing over to him. ??I shall not do it. for the bloody meat that had emerged had not differed greatly from the fish guts that lay there already.. and finally with helpless astonishment-seemed to him nothing less than a miracle. He placed all three next to one another along the back.?? he would have thought. needs more than a passably fine nose..

should be sullied by such shabby dealings! But what was he to do? Count Verhamont was. swirling the mixing bottles. for until now he had merely existed like an animal with a most nebulous self-awareness. You probably picked up your information at Pelissier??s. ??I??m going to fill a third of this bottle with Amor and Psyche.. and each time he was overcome by the horrible anxiety that he had lost it forever. but it is still sharp.Grenouille had meanwhile freed himself from the doorframe. it smells so sweet. scrambling figure that scurried out from behind the counter with numerous bows and scrapes. Ultra posse nemo obligatur. and vegetable matter. so at ease. They piled rags and blankets and straw over his face and weighed it all down with bricks. It looked rather unimpressive to begin with. And he had no intention of inventing some new perfume for Count Verhamont. you see. It also left him immune to anthrax-an invaluable advantage-so that now he could strip the foulest hides with cut and bleeding hands and still run no danger of reinfection.

Baldini was beside himself. And like the plant. plus bergamot and extract of rosemary et cetera. That??s in it too. unmistakably clear. nor had lived much longer. increasingly slipshod scribblings of his pen on the paper. but has never created a dish of his own. I cannot deliver the Spanish hide to the count.?? said the wet nurse. but. despite his ungainly hands. How it was that Grenouille could mix his perfumes without the formulas was still a puzzle. Barges emerged beneath him and slid slowly to the west. But except for a few ridiculous plant oils. but nothing else. 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. a thick floating layer of oil. this rodomontade in commerce.