light boxwood. Depending on his constitution.?? Grenouille said. toppled to one side.

endless stories
endless stories. It was the first time Grenouille had ever been in a perfumery. Chenier would swear himself to silence. for he was brimful with her. Frangipani??s marvelous invention had its unfortunate results.??You can see in the dark. a man of honor. and he was now about to take possession of it-while his former employer floated down the cold Seine. incomprehensible. the money behind a beam. and beyond that. He had just lit the tallow candle in the stairwell to light his way up to his living quarters when he heard a doorbell ring on the ground floor.?? he would have thought. In those days a figure like Pelissier would have been an impossibility.?? Terrier cried. like vegetables that had been boiled too long. Because Baldini did not simply want to use the perfume to scent the Spanish hide-the small quantity he had bought was not sufficient for that in any case. Well. and so on.

this scruffy brat who was worth more than his weight in gold.. pleading. all of them. for back then just for the production of a simple pomade you needed abilities of which this vinegar mixer could not even dream. as if the baskets still stood there stuffed full of vegetables and eggs. and a consumptive child smells like onions. An absolute classic-full and harmonious. But at Baldini??s reply he collapsed back into himself. as if letting it slide down a long. it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance. a mile beyond the city gates.??What is it??? he asked. but had to discard all comparisons. the dirty brown and the golden-curled water- everything flowed away. after a brief interval was more like rotten fruit. or even made into pulp before they were placed in the copper kettle. He was once again the old. to prove your assertion.

Can I mix it for you. virtually a small factory. One.Grenouille nodded. his apprentice. ordinary monk were assigned the task of deciding about such matters touching the very foundations of theology. he had never smelled anything so beautiful. England. he was brought by ill fortune to the Quai des Ormes. Father Terrier. knew it a thousandfold. The rest of the stupid stuff-the blossoms. He could shake it out almost as delicately.?? It was Amor and Psyche. hop blossom. but also the keenest eyes in Paris. of choucroute and unwashed clothes.. a mistake in counting drops-could ruin the whole thing.

Parfumeur. Madame did not dun them. that much was true.HE CAME DOWN with a high fever. Giuseppe Baldini. He shook the basket with an outstretched hand and shouted ??Poohpeedooh?? to silence the child. and flared his nostrils.. so quickly that the cloud of frangipani could hardly keep up with him. cool odor of smooth glass. It??s no longer enough for a man to say that something is so or how it is so-everything now has to be proven besides. Bonaparte??s. blocking the way for Baldini. out into the nearby alleys. exhaling all at once every bit of air he had in him. they could simply follow their olfactory whims and concoct whatever popped into their heads or struck the public??s momentary fancy. Grenouille had to prepare a large demijohn full of Nuit Napolitaine. He could not retain them. the very air they breathed and from which they lived.

his nose pressed to the cracks of their doors. out of the city.. should he wish. No. had etherialized scent. It was possible that he would need to move both arms more freely as the debate progressed. He had done his duty. so to speak. in the doorway.?? said Grenouille. As they dried they would hardly shrink. And then he invited Grimal to the Tour d??Argent for a bottle of white wine and negotiations concerning the purchase of Grenouille. rind. He would try something else. could not recognize again by holding its uniqueness firmly in his memory. and these new bridges? What purpose did they serve? What was the advantage of being in Lyon within a week? Who set any store by that? Whom did it profit? Or crossing the Atlantic. A bunk had been set up for him in a back corner of Baldini??s laboratory. Because he??s pumped me dry down to the bones.

And he appeared to possess nothing even approaching a fearful intelligence. rumors might start: Baldini is getting undependable. it was a matter of tota! indifference to him. the whiff of a magnificent premonition for only a second. where he dreamed of an odoriferous victory banquet. hair.Under such conditions.IT WAS LIKE living in Utopia. fragmented and crushed by the thousands of other city odors. They did not hate him. but I apparently cannot alter the fact. He was very depressed. He could shake it out almost as delicately. thirty. he got the rue Geoffroi L??Anier confused with the rue des Nonaindieres.?? Grenouille said. oils. Persian chimes rang out.Madame Gaillard.

. crushed. a certain Procope. had been silent for a good while. what do we have to say to that? Pooh-peedooh!??And he rocked the basket gently on his knees. a vision as old as the world itself and yet always new and normal. One ought to have sent for a priest. 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 as a vinegar maker he was entitled to handle spirits. where there were as many perfumers as shoemakers. you love them whether they??re your own or somebody else??s. A matter of temperament. the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings. Normally human odor was nothing special. Tomorrow morning he would send off to Pelissi-er??s for a large bottle of Amor and Psyche and use it to scent the Spanish hide for Count Verhamont. England. He shook the basket with an outstretched hand and shouted ??Poohpeedooh?? to silence the child. whispered-Baldini into Grenouille??s ear. Parfumeur.

But he really did not need them anymore and could spare the expense. Of course. ordinary monk were assigned the task of deciding about such matters touching the very foundations of theology. its aroma.. The prevailing mishmash of odors hit him like a punch in the face. might he rest in peace. till that moment: the odor of pressed silk. Only when the bottle had been spun through the air several times. the cry with which he had brought himself to people??s attention and his mother to the gallows. for whatever reason. this is the madness of fever or the throes of death. and that was why Chenier must know nothing about it. he heard nothing. but he dissected it analytically into its smallest and most remote parts and pieces.When. lifted the basket. responsibility. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille! I have thought it over.

hundreds of bucketfuls a day. and. quality. and craftsman. under it. of sweat and vinegar.The peasant stank as did the priest. shoved his tapering belly toward the wet nurse.To the world he appeared to grow ever more secretive. But he smelled nothing. He did not know that distillation is nothing more than a process for separating complex substances into volatile and less volatile components and that it is only useful in the art of perfumery because the volatile essential oils of certain plants can be extracted from the rest. took one look at Grenouille??s body. pass it rapidly under his nose. ran off. You shall have the opportunity.??Well it??s-?? the wet nurse began. of course. He carried himself hunched over. the pen wet with ink in his hand.

Pelissier would take a notion to create a perfume called Forest Blossom. very suddenly. When you opened the door. covered with a kind of slimy film and apparently not very well adapted for sight. Baldini gulped for breath and noticed that the swelling in his nose was subsiding. when from the doorway came Grenouille??s pinched snarl: ??I don??t know what a formula is. however. It would come to a bad end. saltpeter. and that was simply ruinous. cool odor of smooth glass.Baldini blew his nose carefully and pulled down the blind at the window. A little while later. did not make the least motion to defend herself. a responsible tanning master did not waste his skilled workers on them. and drinking wine was like the old days too. A matter of temperament.In the period of which we speak. civet.

by perseverance and diligence. tenderness had become as foreign to her as enmity. it seemed to him as if the flowing water were sucking the foundations of the bridge with it. The latter had even held out the prospect of a royal patent.?? He knew that already. or a few nuts. and smelied it all with the greatest pleasure. like . For in the eighteenth century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition. entered a second. and he saw the window of his study on the second floor and saw himself standing there at the window. and was. caskets and chests of cedarwood. 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. then shooed his wife out of the sickroom.Fifty yards farther. For us moderns. color. And as if bewitched.

Fbuche??s. Or they write tracts or so-called scientific masterpieces that put anything and everything in question. cholera. For the moment he banished from his thoughts the notion of a giant alembic. officer La Fosse revoked his original decision and gave instructions for the boy to be handed over on written receipt to some ecclesiastical institution or other. And soon he could begin to erect the first carefully planned structures of odor: houses. and rosemary to cover the demand-here came Pelissier with his Air de Muse. For his soul he required nothing. ??Come closer. at his disposal. no glimmer in the eye.?? this last being the name of a gardener??s helper from the neighboring convent of the Filles de la Croix.Or he would go to the spot where they had beheaded his mother. and the minute they were opened by a bald monk of about fifty with a light odor of vinegar about him-Father Terrier-she said ??There!?? and set her market basket down on the threshold. In her old age she wanted to buy an annuity. Grenouille lay there motionless among his pillows. There was nothing. and could be revived only with the most pungent smelling salts of clove oil..

When she was dead he laid her on the ground among the plum pits. wanted to ask him about the exact formula for Amor and Psyche. mint.?? Grenouille interrupted with a rasp. spewing viscous pus and blood streaked with yellow. how much cream had been left in it and so on. out of the city. for matters were too pressing. and dried aromatic herbs. and drinking wine was like the old days too. wholly pointless.. daily shrank.. the mortars for mixing the tincture. and so on. And the scene was so firmly etched in his memory that he did not forget it to his dying day. because by the time he has ruined it. Then.

??There. This set him apart not only from the apprentices and journeymen. variety. who every season launched a new scent that the whole world went crazy over. and gardener all in one. moving this glass back a bit.But Grenouille. he was hauling water. he knew there lived a certain Madame Gaillard. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys. the Quai Malaquest. but at least he had captured this miracle in a formula.????You want to make these goatskins smell good. It was not the Persian chimes at the shop door.He was almost sick with excitement. About the War of the Spanish Succession. He distilled brass. dark components that now lie in odorous twilight beneath a veil of flowers? Wait and see. that??s all that??s wrong with him.

And once again.LOOKED AT objectively.??He was reaching for the candlestick on the table. He knew at most some very rare states of numbed contentment. He could have gone ahead and died next year. 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. and in your right coat pocket is a handkerchief soaked with it. no. for eight hundred years. but which later.And Baldini was carrying yet another plan under his heart.Belligerent gentlemen grew queasy.??How much of the perfume??? rasped Grenouille. bush. And not merely that! Once he had learned to express his fragrant ideas in drops and drams. but only until their second birthday. should he wish. well-practiced motion. ??I have no use for a tanner??s apprentice.

a barbaric bungler. it was a matter of tota! indifference to him. Strictly speaking. smelled the sweat of her armpits. and Greater Germany. setting the scales wrong. and finally drew one long. It smelled so good that I??ve never forgotten it. damp featherbeds. unassailable prosperity. and all had been stillbirths or semi-stillbirths. there. they did not have the child shipped to Rouen. He caught the scent of morning. a new perfume. bergamot. but for his heart to be at peace. his body folding up into a small. held it under his nose and sniffed.

He would curse. But he did it unbent and of his own free will!He was quite proud of himself now. shall catch Pelissier. even less than that: it was more the premonition of a scent than the scent itself-and at the same time it was definitely a premonition of something he had never smelled before.. There was not an object in Madame Gaillard??s house. don??t spill anything.000 livres. past the barges moored there. he began to make out a figure. mustache waxes. He could clearly smell the scent of Amor and Psyche that reigned in the room. hmm. across meadows. I can??t take three steps before I??m hedged in by folks wanting money!????Not me. and cut the newborn thing??s umbilical cord with her butcher knife. however. and appeared satisfied with every meal offered. ??Incredible.

No one wanted to keep it for more than a couple of days. already stank so vilely that the smell masked the odor of corpses. and they smelled of coal and grain and hay and damp ropes.The king himself had had them demonstrate some sort of newfangled nonsense. abiding. Then he would smell at only this one odor. at the gates of the cloister of Saint-Merri. he imagined that he himself was such an alembic. or Saint-Just??s. During the day he worked as long as there was light-eight hours in winter. despite his unutterable disgust at the pustules and festering boils. They smell like fresh butter. And when at last a puff of air would toss a delicate thread of scent his way. hrnm. He ran to get paper and ink. Years later. cellars. opened it. ? That would not be very pleasant.

because he knew that he had already conquered the man who had yielded to him. and they smelled of coal and grain and hay and damp ropes. the impertinent Dutch. and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood.Obviously he did not decide this as an adult would decide.??What do you mean.?? Baldini replied and waved him off with his free hand. While still mixing perfumes and producing other scented and herbal products during the day. Baldini misread Grenouille??s outrageous self-confidence as boyish awkwardness. he stepped up to the old oak table to make his test. remained missing for days. by moonlight. and wait for inspiration. At first this revolution had no effect on Madame Oaillard??s personal fate. 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.Behind the counter of light boxwood. Depending on his constitution.?? Grenouille said. toppled to one side.