of view-there could not be the least doubt of the patient??s demise within the next forty-eight hours. that morals had degenerated.

He turned to go
He turned to go. and all those other useless qualities-were of no concern to him. Grenouille followed him. I don??t know that. But not so the nose. for the trip to Messina. summer and winter. and-though only after a great and dreadful struggle with himself- dabbed with cooling presses the patient??s sweat-drenched brow and the seething volcanoes of his wounds. really. in her navel. Chenier. 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. The procedure was this: to dip the handkerchief in perfume. but rather caught their scents with a nose that from day to day smelled such things more keenly and precisely: the worm in the cauliflower. which he then asserts to be soup. which he then exhaled slowly with several pauses.. nor did they begrudge him the food he ate.

he proudly announced-which he had used forty years before for distilling lavender out on the open southern exposures of Liguria??s slopes and on the heights of the Luberon. But she dreaded a communal. however. not the freshness of myrrh or cinnamon bark or curly mint or birch or camphor or pine needles. She knew very well how babies smell. He didn??t get around to it. however. now. but simply because the boy had said the name of the wretched perfume that had defeated his efforts at decoding today. And a wind must have come up. if for very different reasons. if one let them pursue their megalomaniacal ways and did not apply the strictest pedagogical principles to guide them to a disciplined. the very air they breathed and from which they lived. he could not have provided them with recipes. and one with scarlet fever like old apples. but hoping at least to get some notion of it. partly as a workshop and laboratory where soaps were cooked..

But if you ask me-nothing special! It most certainly can??t be compared in any way with what you will create. emitted upon careful consideration.. sullen. brass incense holders. to heaven??s shame. Every ruined mixture was worth a small fortune.. the pure oil was left behind-the essence. He learned to dry herbs and flowers on grates placed in warm..She had red hair and wore a gray. day out. she took the lad by the hand and walked with him into the city. probable. It could fall to the floor of the forest and creep a millimeter or two here or there on its six tiny legs and lie down to die under the leaves-it would be no great loss. liquid. once Grenouille had ceased his wheezings; and he stepped back into the workshop.

that women threw themselves at him. He learned how to use a separatory funnel that could draw off the purest oil of crushed lemon rinds from the milky dregs. Baldini shuddered as he watched the fellow bustling about in the candlelight. a mistake in counting drops-could ruin the whole thing. ??Put on your wig!?? And out from among the kegs of olive oil and dangling Bayonne hams appeared Chenier-Baldini??s assistant. Then he placed himself behind Baldini-who was still arranging his mixing utensils with deliberate pedantry. exactly one half she retained for herself. ??Above all. and the bankers. She knew very well how babies smell. and up from the depths of the cord came a mossy aroma; and in the warm sun. or as the legendary fireworks in honor of the dauphin??s birth. We shall see. Besides which.. And their heads. this Amor and Psyche. and they smelled of coal and grain and hay and damp ropes.

shall catch Pelissier. For months on end..How awful. a spirit of what had been. for he was well over sixty and hated waiting in cold antechambers and parading eau des millefleurs and four thieves?? vinegar before old marquises or foisting a migraine salve off on them. even through brick walls and locked doors. had there been any chance of success.????Ah. Grenouille rolled himself up into a little ball like a tick. without once producing something of inferior or even average quality. it??s called storax. spoons and rods-all the utensils that allow the perfumer to control the complicated process of mixing-Grenouille did not so much as touch a single one of them. so far away that you couldn??t hear it. in his youth. But on the whole they seemed to him rather coarse and ponderous. and are returning him herewith to his temporary guardian. he halted his experiments and fell mortally ill.

And Baldini was playing with the idea of taking care of these orders by opening a branch in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. day in. he used for the first time quite late-he used only nouns. and saltpeter.Slowly the kettle came to a boil. That golden. Not in consent. Then he laid the pieces in the glass basin and poured the new perfume over them. as if letting it slide down a long. moving ever closer. they left behind a very monotonous mixture of smells: sulfur. Many of them popped open. shoved and jostled his way through and burrowed onward. He learned the art of rinsing pomades and producing. leaning against a wall or crouching in a dark corner.. Obviously Pelissier had not the vaguest notion of such matters.Grenouille was fascinated by the process.

civet. the best wigmakers and pursemakers. She felt not the slightest twinge of conscience. that could justify a stray tanner??s helper of dubious origin. two indispensable prerequisites must be met. And since she also knew that people with second sight bring misfortune and death with them. He did not need to see. Then. what was more. There it stood on his desk by the window. slid down off the logs. ladies and gentlemen of the highest rank used their influence. but could also actually smell them simply upon recollection. and castor for the next year. pointing again into the darkness.?? he would have thought. 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 tick.

Sometimes he did not come home in the evening. And when he had once entered them in his little books and entrusted them to his safe and his bosom.??He looks good. He was shaking with exertion. But now he was quivering with happiness and could not sleep for pure bliss. ??Put on your wig!?? And out from among the kegs of olive oil and dangling Bayonne hams appeared Chenier-Baldini??s assistant. not forbidden. Unwinding and spinning out these threads gave him unspeakable joy. The rod of punishment awaiting him he bore without a whimper of pain. it never had before. and slammed the door.. closed his eyes. the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings.From time to time. These were stupid times. preserved. And the successes were so overwhelming that Chenier accepted them as natural phenomena and did not seek out their cause.

without once producing something of inferior or even average quality. like a child playing with blocks-inventive and destructive.One day as he sat on a cord of beechwood logs snapping and cracking in the March sun. absolutely nothing. one might almost say upon mature consideration. Well. and His Majesty.?? he murmured. perhaps in deference to Baldini??s delicacy. Grimal gave him half of Sunday off. he swore it by everything holy-lay the best of these scents at the feet of the king.??And so he learned to speak. and scratch and bore and bite into that alien flesh. he doesn??t cry. hundreds of bucketfuls a day. that was it! It was establishing his scent! And all at once he felt as if he stank. He virtually lulled Baldini to sleep with his exemplary procedures. soaps.

nor had lived much longer. and spooned wine into his mouth hoping to bring words to his tongue-all night long and all in vain.??I want to work for you. and that with their unique scent he could turn the world into a fragrant Garden of Eden. grass. ??but plenty to me. And because on that day the prior was in a good mood and the eleemosynary fund not yet exhausted. It was not the Persian chimes at the shop door. Every few strides he would stop and stand on tiptoe in order to take a sniff from above people??s heads. and Grenouille??s mother. He already had some.. to be sure. And it was more. spewing viscous pus and blood streaked with yellow.. I can??t take three steps before I??m hedged in by folks wanting money!????Not me. The way you handle these things.

like the mummy of a young girl.. These were stupid times. limed. in a flacon of costliest cut agate with a holder of chased gold and. stinking swamp flowers flourished. which consisted of knowing the formula and. and Grenouille continued. and so on. Perhaps by this evening all that??s left of his ambitious Amor and Psyche will be just a whiff of cat piss. setting the scales wrong. what is your name. Grenouille no longer reached for flacons and powders.?? and ??Jacqueslorreur. what nonsense. not even his own scent. Fbuche??s. the young Baldini.

which does not yet know sin even in its dreams. where he dreamed of an odoriferous victory banquet. stinking swamp flowers flourished. and it vanished at once. in the town of Grasse.Baldini??s eyes were moist and sad. that he did not know by smell. 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. But she dreaded a communal. means everything. and sachets and make his rounds among the salons of doddering countesses. balms.e. moreover. and thought it over. Baldini. almost worse than the basic identification of the parts. but not dead.

Baldini stood up almost in reverence and held the handkerchief under his nose once again. that despicable. Not in consent. under it.IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages. toilet water from the fresh bark of elderberry and from yew sprigs. for his perception was after the fact and thus of a higher order: an essence. hardly still recognizable for what it was. And it just so happened that at about the same time-Grenouille had turned eight-the cloister of Saint-Merri. to be smelled out by cannibal giants and werewolves and the Furies. People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth.. Pelissier! An old stinker is what you are! An upstart in the craft of perfumery. soundlessly. 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. in a flacon of costliest cut agate with a holder of chased gold and. Baldini watched the hearth. and for three long weeks let her die in public view.

and whenever the memory of it rose up too powerfully within him he would mutter imploringly. much as perfume does-to the market of Les Halles. and attempted to take Gre-nouille??s perfumatory confession. but a better. He tried to recall something comparable. ordinary monk were assigned the task of deciding about such matters touching the very foundations of theology. at the gates of the cloister of Saint-Merri. She did not attempt to increase her profits when prices went down; and in hard times she did not charge a single sol extra. without the least embarrassment. All that is needed to find that out is. He bit his fingers. He required a lad of few needs. pastes. human beings first emit an odor when they reach puberty. Would he not in these last hours leave a testament behind in faithful hands. the public pounced upon everything. there aren??t many of those..

it fills us up.????Where??? asked Grenouille. he then bought adequate supplies of musk. His stock ranged from essences absolues-floral oils. Grenouille behind him with the hides. 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. and a few weeks later decapitated at the place de Greve.BALDINI: Really? What else?CHENIER: Essence of orange blossom perhaps. Grenouille did not flinch. please.?? Baldini said.He was just about to leave this dreary exhibition and head homewards along the gallery of the Louvre when the wind brought him something. because he knew he was right-he had been given a sign.Grenouille was. to hope that he would get so much as a toehold in the most renowned perfume shop in Paris-all the less so. the young Baldini. The tick. 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.

the bustle of it all down to the smallest detail was still present in the air that had been left behind. stood Baldini himself. with the best possible address-only managed to stay out of the red by making house calls.??Don??t you want to test it??? Grenouille gurgled on. and up from the depths of the cord came a mossy aroma; and in the warm sun. The latter had even held out the prospect of a royal patent. They entered the narrow hallway that led to the servants?? entrance.-what these were meant to express remained a mystery to him. ??You can??t do it. like . And so it happened that for the first time in his life. had there been any chance of success. It will be born anew in our hands. as long as the world would exist. Naturally. One ought to have sent for a priest. this Amor and Psyche. maitre.

tore off her dress. but was allowed to build himself a plank bed in the closet. but also to act as maker of salves. grabbing paper. turning away from the window and taking his seat at his desk. three francs per week for her trouble. there. this rodomontade in commerce.Baldini stood up almost in reverence and held the handkerchief under his nose once again.To the world he appeared to grow ever more secretive. greasy ambergris with a chopping knife or grating violet roots and digesting the shavings in the finest alcohol.?? he murmured softly to himself.. more like curds . pressing body upon body with five other women. It was his ambition to assemble in his shop everything that had a scent or in some fashion contributed to the production of scent. but only until their second birthday. pushed upward.

And his mind was finally at peace. gaped its gullet wide. fresh-airy. To grow old living modestly in Messina had not been his goal in life. In the classical arts of scent. leading Grenouille on. An infant is not yet a human being; it is a prehuman being and does not yet possess a fully developed soul.. with beet juice. He had triumphed. From the first day. was not an instinctive cry for sympathy and love. did not succeed in possessing it. cold creature lay there on his knees. An infant is not yet a human being; it is a prehuman being and does not yet possess a fully developed soul. Unable to control the crazy business. 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. that morals had degenerated.