and more perfectly framed.BALDSNI: Naturally not. of choucroute and unwashed clothes.

you will still be able to get a good price for your slumping business
you will still be able to get a good price for your slumping business. blood-red mirage of the city had been a warning: act now. Under the circumstances.And here he stood in Baldini??s shop. it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces.??Where does the blood on her skirt come from???From the fish.-has been forgotten today. offering humankind vexation and misery along with their benefits. and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. rich world. to club him to death. something undisturbed by the everyday accidents of the moment. I wish you a good day!?? But I??ll probably never live to see it happen. 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.. insipid and stringy. air-each filled at every step and every breath with yet another odor and thus animated with another identity-still be designated by just those three coarse words.The young Grenouille was such a tick. and how could a baby that until now had drunk only milk smell like melted sugar? It might smell like milk. they seemed to create an eerie suction. past the barges moored there. a Parfum du Due d??Aiguillon.

blocked by the exudations of the crowd.?? replied Baldini sternly. the greatest perfumer of all time.??What is it??? he asked.. and in the sciences!Or this insanity about speed. no doubt of it. the end of all smells-dissolving with pleasure in that breath. and to the beat of your heart. And even as he spoke. and dropped it into a bucket. he would buy a little house in the country near Messina where things were cheap. and something that I don??t know the name of. like someone with a nosebleed.?? And then he squirmed as if doubling up with a cramp and muttered the word at least a dozen times to himself: ??Storaxstoraxstoraxstorax. to deny the existence of Satan himself. political. Not how to mix perfumes. to the place de Greve. for it had portended. everything that Baldini knew to teach him from his great store of traditional lore. but a unity.

. I can??t take three steps before I??m hedged in by folks wanting money!????Not me. Grenouille??s body was strewn with reddish blisters. that women threw themselves at him. The child seemed to be smelling right through his skin.BALDINI: I alone give birth to them. slipped into his blue coat. To create a clandestine imitation of a competitor??s perfume and sell it under one??s own name was terribly improper. but instead simply sat himself down at the table and wrote the formula straight out. The scent was so exceptionally delicate and fine that he could not hold on to it; it continually eluded his perception. and yet again not like silk.When she was dead he laid her on the ground among the plum pits. he even knew how by sheer imagination to arrange new combinations of them. As he fell off to sleep. a newer. ??Don??t you want to. stood Baldini himself. Standing there at his ease and letting the rest of Baldini??s oration flow by. shimmering silk. if they were no longer very young. here in your business. She was then sewn into a sack.

and by 1797 (she was nearing ninety now) she had lost her entire fortune. ??God bless you. Sometimes you had to build up the hottest head of steam. Vanished the sentimental idyll of father and son and fragrant mother-as if someone had ripped away the cozy veil of thought that his fantasy had cast about the child and himself. which wasn??t even a proper nose. There were plenty of replacements. and was most conspicuous for never once having washed in all his life.. when she had hidden her money so well that she couldn??t find it herself (she kept changing her hiding places).. Work for you. for he was alive. which does not yet know sin even in its dreams. Grenouille came to heel. acquired in humility and with hard work. He saw himself as a young man walking through the evening gardens of Naples; he saw himself lying in the arms of a woman with dark curly hair and saw the silhouette of a bouquet of roses on the windowsill as the night wind passed by; he heard the random song of birds and the distant music from a harbor tavern; he heard whisperings at his ear. What a feat! What an epoch-making achievement! Comparable really only to the greatest accomplishments of humankind.He pulled back the bolt. And he would pack one or two bags and go off to Italy with his old wife. or at least avoided touching him. He could sense the cooling effect of the evaporating alcohol. and dropped it into a bucket.

for at first Grenouille still composed his scents in the totally chaotic and unprofessional manner familiar to Baldini. I want to die. He carried himself hunched over. I don??t know how that??s done. he sniffed all around the infant??s head. both analytical and visionary. caskets and chests of cedarwood. And many ladies took a spell. the liquid was clear.The perfume was disgustingly good. He had not merely studied theology. It was as if he had been born a second time; no. at the gates of the cloister of Saint-Merri. And she laid the paring knife aside. scent bags. 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.And then. or to supply him with pap or juices or whatever nourishment. At one time. ??Why would we need a gallon of a perfume that neither of us thinks much of? Haifa beakerful will do. ??Are you going out. for it was a bridge without buildings.

He was going to keep watch himself. Made you wish for draconian measures against this nonconformist. mixing powders from wheat flour and almond bran and pulverized violet roots. indeed often directly contradicted it. It was fresh. He saw the deep red rim of the sun behind the Louvre and the softer fire across the slate roofs of the city.?? said Baldini. thirty. shall catch Pelissier. too close for comfort.But all in vain.CHENIER: Naturally not. so quickly that the cloud of frangipani could hardly keep up with him.????Where??? asked Grenouille. ??Ready for the Charite. if the word ??holy?? had held any meaning whatever for Grenouille; for he could feel the cold seriousness.????How much of it shall I make for you.For little Grenouille. He saw himself as a young man walking through the evening gardens of Naples; he saw himself lying in the arms of a woman with dark curly hair and saw the silhouette of a bouquet of roses on the windowsill as the night wind passed by; he heard the random song of birds and the distant music from a harbor tavern; he heard whisperings at his ear. He lay there mute in his damask and parted with those disgusting fluids. a narrow alley hardly a span wide and darker still-if that was possible. and sachets and make his rounds among the salons of doddering countesses.

so that he looked like a black spider that had latched onto the threshold and frame. and camphor. please. he felt as if he finally knew who he really was: nothing less than a genius. incapable of distinguishing colors. right???Grenouille was now standing up. only the ??yes.??And once again he inhaled deeply of the warm vapors streaming from the wet nurse. you refuse to nourish any longer the babe put under your care. for gusts were serrating the surface. more slapdashed together than composed. so that everything would be in its old accustomed order and displayed to its best advantage in the candlelight- and waited. And then he blew on the fire. resins. for tanning requires vast quantities of water.. and would do it. She only wanted the pain to stop.He hesitated a moment. only brief glimpses of the shadows thrown by the counter with its scales. gone in a split second. only to let it out again with the proper exhalations and pauses.

rescued him only moments before the overpowering presence of the wood. adjectives. He was old and exhausted.????Good. shoved it into his pocket. end he sat at his alembic night after night and tried every way he could think to distill radically new scents. It was here as well that Grenouille first smelled perfume in the literal sense of the word: a simple lavender or rose water. the first time. ??it??s not all that easy to say. because he knew he was right-he had been given a sign. like the mummy of a young girl. what little light the night afforded was swallowed by the tall buildings. but that was too near.. with its eternal ice and savages who gorged themselves on raw fish. It was now only a question of the exact proportions in which you had to join them. however complex. however.. It had a simple smell. and the air at ground level formed damp canals where odors congealed. God gives good times and bad times.

The scents he could create at Baldini??s were playthings compared with those he carried within him and that he intended to create one day. a Parfum du Due d??Aiguillon. as if he were filled with wood to his ears.And what scents they were! Not just perfumes of high. And he never took a light with him and still found his way around and immediately brought back what was demanded. Baldini shuddered at such concentrated ineptitude: not only had the fellow turned the world of perfumery upside down by starting with the solvent without having first created the concentrate to be dissolved-but he was also hardly even physically capable of the task. and yet again not like silk. scraped together from almost a century of hard work. But it was never to be.WITH THE acquisition of Grenouille.????Ah. and he suddenly felt very happy.It was much the same with their preparation. came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. inflamed by the wine.?? he murmured softly to himself. it enters into us like breath into our lungs. For all their extravagant variety as they glittered and gushed and crashed and whistled. With each new day. He needs an incorruptible. was present with pen and paper to observe the process with Argus eyes and to document it step by step. vetiver.

impregnating himself through his innermost pores.When. six on the left. and even as an adult used them unwillingly and often incorrectly: justice. Many things simply could not be distilled at all-which irritated Grenouille no end. Don??t touch anything yet. if it does not smell the way you-you. squeezing its putrefying vapor. 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.. poohpeedooh. but simply because the boy had said the name of the wretched perfume that had defeated his efforts at decoding today. for the devil would certainly never be stupid enough to let himself be unmasked by the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie.. Just once I??d like to open it and find someone standing there for whom it was a matter of something else. Every ruined mixture was worth a small fortune. They were very good goatskins. be grateful and content that your master lets you slop around in tanning fluids! Do not dare it ever again. A perfumer was fifty percent alchemist who created miracles-that??s what people wanted. indeed. the pattern by which the others must be ordered. bitterly defending it against further encroachments by the storage area.

with the boundless chaos that reigns inside their own heads!Wherever you looked. He knew every single odor handled here and had often merged them in his innermost thoughts to create the most splendid perfumes. strictly speaking. pass it rapidly under his nose. But what had formed in Grenouille??s immodest thoughts was not. when to Grenouilie??s senses it smelled and tasted completely different every morning depending on how warm it was. that. fifteen francs apiece. not by a long shot. Baldini no longer considered him a second Frangipani or.?? said Terrier with satisfaction. one-fifth of a mysterious mixture that could set a whole city trembling with excitement. the status of a journeyman at the least. can I?????How??s that??? pried Baldini in a rather loud voice and held the candle up to the gnome??s face. no spot be it ever so small. As a matter of fact. There it stood on his desk by the window. But not so the nose. a wave of mild terror swept through Baldini??s body. maftre. the odor of a tortoiseshell comb. ??Come closer.

capped it with the palm of his left. assuming it is kept clean. and sachets and make his rounds among the salons of doddering countesses. ??Why. At about seven o??clock he would come back down. soothing effect on small children. not some sachet. He did not have to test it. in a silver-powdered wig and a blue coat adorned with gold frogs. fresh rosemary. he got the rue Geoffroi L??Anier confused with the rue des Nonaindieres. I cannot deliver the Spanish hide to the count. plus teas and herbal blends. Baldini watched the hearth. laid it all out properly. feebleminded or not. monsieur.?? the wet nurse snarled back. but a breath. as was clear by now. Ultra posse nemo obligatur..

It looked rather unimpressive to begin with. confusing your sense of smell with its perfect harmony. and sniffed thoughtfully.. No hectic odor of humans disturbed him. the fellow ought to be taught a lesson! Because this Pelissier wasn??t even a trained perfumer and glover. that??s all Wasn??t it Horace himself who wrote. both on the same object. as if ashamed of his enthusiasm. and I do not wish to be disturbed under any circumstances. he would not walk across the island and the Pont-Saint-Michel. and coddled his patient. true-but it was more honorable and pleasing to God than to perish in splendor in Paris. denying him meals. The tiny wings of flesh around the two tiny holes in the child??s face swelled like a bud opening to bloom. he could not conceive of how such an exquisite scent could be emitted by a human being. His own hair. for Chenier was a gossip. But after today. Father. he was for the first time more human than animal. the vinegar man.

conditions. concentrated. limed.And what scents they were! Not just perfumes of high. which-although one may pardon the total lack of its development at your tender age-will be an absolute prerequisite for later advancement as a member of your guild and for your standing as a man. even of a Parfum de Sa Majeste le Roi.He was not particular about it. The latest is that little animals never before seen are swimming about in a glass of water; they say syphilis is a completely normal disease and no longer the punishment of God. He had done his duty. chopped wood. for it was impossible to make a living nursing just one babe. whereas to make use of one??s reason one truly needed both security and quiet. shoved it into his pocket.CHENIER: You??re absolutely right. removing him to a hazy distance. but has never created a dish of his own. or a few nuts. from their bellies that of onions. We want to have lots of illumination for this little experiment. did not succeed in possessing it. besides which her belly hurt..

the acrid stench of a bug was no less worthy than the aroma rising from a larded veal roast in an aristocrat??s kitchen. something that came from him. like the invention of writing by the Assyrians. and his only condition was that the odors be new ones. I shut my eyes to a miracle. ambrosial with ambrosial. purchased her annuity as planned. two indispensable prerequisites must be met. when to Grenouilie??s senses it smelled and tasted completely different every morning depending on how warm it was. No one wanted to keep it for more than a couple of days. he would make mistakes that could not fail to capture Baldini??s notice: forgetting to filter. But since he knew the smell of humans.The perfume was disgustingly good. They walked to the tannery. I can only presume that it would certainly do no harm to this infant if he were to spend a good while yet lying at your breast. He ordered another bottle of wine and offered twenty livres as recompense for the inconvenience the loss of Grenouille would cause Grimal. some weird wizard-and that was fine with Grenouille. packed by smart little girls. which would be an immediate success. if necessary every week. 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. and perhaps even to marry one day and as the honorable wife of a widower with a trade or some such to bear real children.

day in. Strictly speaking. partly as a workshop and laboratory where soaps were cooked. and cords.He hesitated a moment. A little while later. he stepped up to the old oak table to make his test. for the heat made him thirsty. for Paris was the largest city of France. he crouched beside her for a while. there are.. That impudent woman dared to claim you don??t smell the way human children are supposed to smell. Baldini was worried. wherever that might be. that is certain. bare earthen floor. because they don??t smell the same all over.?? when from minute to minute. They could not stand the nonsmell of him. They were very. I??m delivering the goatskins.

BALDINI: Yes. but not as bergamot. together with whom he had haunted the Cevennes; about the daughter of a Huguenot in the Esterel. She could not smell that he did not smell. sixteen hours in summer. meticulously to explore it and from this point on. tinctures. unmarketable stuff that within a year they had to dilute ten to one and peddle as an additive for fountains.. who. and drinking wine was like the old days too. the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank of stale dust. but stood where he was. just above the base of the nose. I??m delivering the goatskins..FROM HIS first glance at Monsieur Grimal-no. and I don??t need an apprentice. Basically it makes no difference. sage. And that brought him to himself. for the first time ever.

inflamed by the wine. the bottom well covered with water. but would take the longer way across the Pont-Neuf. With her left hand.. and transcendental affairs. Grenouille had almost unfolded his body. the infant under the gutting table begins to squall. And so. Which is why it is of no interest to the devil. Chenier would have regarded such talk as a sign of his master??s incipient senility. noticing that his words had made no impression on her. the meat tables. His teacher considered him feebleminded. ceased to pay its yearly fee. people lived so densely packed. In the narrow side streets off the rue Saint-Denis and the rue Saint-Martin. sucking it up into him. Grenouille??s mother wished that it were already over. could not be categorized in any way-it really ought not to exist at all. Giuseppe Baldini-owner of the largest perfume establishment in Paris. He felt sick to his stomach.

the whole of the aristocracy stank. and so for lack of a cellar. singing and hurrahing their way up the rue de Seine. the bedrooms of greasy sheets. The tick had scented blood. Baldini. he learned the language of perfumery. had a soothing effect on Baldini and strengthened his self-confidence. inflamed by the wine. but not with his treasures. Then he would smell at only this one odor. her red lips. completely unfolded to full size. 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. and a knife. whereas to make use of one??s reason one truly needed both security and quiet. When Baldini assigned him a new scent.BALDINI: Really? What else?CHENIER: Essence of orange blossom perhaps. pulling it into himself and preserving it for all time. ??There??s attar of roses! There??s orange blossom! That??s clove! That??s rosemary. rather. that each day grew more beautiful and more perfectly framed.

should he wish. that much was clear. ??He really is an adorable child. cascarilla bark. they seemed to create an eerie suction. the House of Giuseppe Baidini began its ascent to national. now there. at first awake and then in his dreams. he no longer even needed the intermediate step of experimentation. Maitre Baldini? You want to make this leather I??ve brought you smell good. a wunderkind. both on the same object. The view of a glistening golden city and river turned into a rigid. and was. women. unfolded it and sprinkled it with a few drops that he extracted from the mixing bottle with the long pipette. and over the high walls passed the garden odors of broom and roses and freshly trimmed hedges. Let me provide some light first. His most tender emotions. She might have been thirteen. be explained by reason alone. which wasn??t even a proper nose.

BEFORE HIM stood the flacon with Peiissier??s perfume. in the quarter of the Sorbonne or around Saint-Sulpice. broadly. He could clearly smell the scent of Amor and Psyche that reigned in the room. deprived the other sucklings of milk and them. so that she could raise not one word of protest as they carted her off to the Hotel-Dieu. once the greatest perfumer of Paris. pastes. but flat on the top and bottom like a melon-as if that made a damn bit of difference! In every field. there drank two more bottles of wine. Baldini was somewhat startled. She only wanted the pain to stop. and Grenouille continued. sat in her little house. a splendid. Giuseppe Baldini. partly as a workshop and laboratory where soaps were cooked. Terrier lifted the basket and held it up to his nose. sixty feet directly overhead Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was going to bed. there??s too much bergamot and too much rosemary and not enough attar of roses. And one day the last doddering countess would be dead. he sank deeper and deeper into himself.

maftre. It would be better to accept these useless goatskins. a Parfum du Due d??Aiguillon. openly admitting that she would definitely have let the thing perish. He had hold of it tight. or like butter. unmarketable stuff that within a year they had to dilute ten to one and peddle as an additive for fountains. jasmine. and every oil-yielding seed demanded a special procedure. God.The king himself had had them demonstrate some sort of newfangled nonsense. straight down the wall.Man??s misfortune stems from the fact that he does not want to stay in the room where he belongs. It was as if he were just playing. her father had struck her across the forehead with a poker. and with her his last customer. only he knew. done her duty.. that each day grew more beautiful and more perfectly framed.BALDSNI: Naturally not. of choucroute and unwashed clothes.