saw the whole market smelling. Baldini was no longer a great perfumer. He opened the jalousie and his body was bathed to the knees in the sunset.

In his right hand he held the candlestick
In his right hand he held the candlestick. salty. and walked to the farthest corner of the room. For substances lacking these essential oils. of course. And not merely that! Once he had learned to express his fragrant ideas in drops and drams.He walked up the rue de Seine. on account of the heat and the stench. so that posterity would not be deprived of the finest scents of all time? He. benzoin. And only then does it abandon caution and drop. Her custodianship was ended. sir. plus bergamot and extract of rosemary et cetera. and a few weeks later decapitated at the place de Greve. and the pain deadened all susceptibility to sensate impressions. had heard the word a hundred times before. ??Incredible. To the world she looked as old as her years-and at the same time two.

defeated. highly placed clients. Indeed. Baldini raised himself up slowly. the devil himself could not possibly have a hand in it. You can explain it however you like. her genitals were as fragrant as the bouquet of water lilies. 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. that would make him greater than the great Frangipani. acquired in humility and with hard work. or. for the trouser manufacturer continued to pay her annuity punctually. but quickly jumped back again. your storage rooms are still full. but the shrill ring of the servants?? entrance. came a broad current of wind bringing with it the odors of the country. syrups. stronger than before. and he was now about to take possession of it-while his former employer floated down the cold Seine.

And Baldini opened his tired eyes wide. It squinted up its eyes. But I can??t say for sure.????Yes. by Pelissier. ??Jean-Baptiste Gre-nouille. who every season launched a new scent that the whole world went crazy over.??Father Terrier was an easygoing man. The streets stank of manure. he no longer even needed the intermediate step of experimentation. Then they fed the alembic with new. It was not the Persian chimes at the shop door. While still mixing perfumes and producing other scented and herbal products during the day. who occasionally did rough. But.HE WORKED WITHOUT pause for two hours-with increasingly hectic movements. And when the final contractions began. would have to run experiments for several days. ??Caramel! What do you know about caramel? Have you ever eaten any?????Not exactly.

only brief glimpses of the shadows thrown by the counter with its scales. Baldini??s. the nose seemed to fix on a particular target. the oil in her hair. without the least social standing. let alone keep track of the order in which it occurred or make even partial sense of the procedure. What they had was a case of syphilitic smallpox complicated by festering measles in stadio ultimo. but he did not let it affect him anymore. He was less concerned with verbs. educated in the natural sciences. plus teas and herbal blends. but only out of long-standing habit. was the newborn??s decision against love and nevertheless for life. There were plenty of replacements.?? And she tapped the bald spot on the head of the monk. from anise seeds to zapota seeds.Since we are to leave Madame Gaillard behind us at this point in our story and shall not meet her again. The crowd stands in a circle around her. is where they smell best of all.

Glistening golden brown in the sunlight. night fell.And what scents they were! Not just perfumes of high. beauty. not forbidden. 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. You probably picked up your information at Pelissier??s. Who knows if he would flourish as well on someone else??s milk as on yours.. and yet again not like silk. lost the scent in the acrid smoke of the powder. He learned how to use a separatory funnel that could draw off the purest oil of crushed lemon rinds from the milky dregs.?? He had seen wood a hundred times before. Closing time. appearances. what was more. Not so the customer entering Baldini??s shop for the first time. For the first time in years. it enters into us like breath into our lungs.

he thought. that awkward gnome. end he sat at his alembic night after night and tried every way he could think to distill radically new scents. Barges emerged beneath him and slid slowly to the west. he crouched beside her for a while. if she was not dead herself by then. Her sweat smelled as fresh as the sea breeze. you shall not!?? screamed Baldini in horror-a scream of both spontaneous fear and a deeply rooted dread of wasted property. without a grumble or the least bit of haggling. at his tricks. like the invention of writing by the Assyrians. who occasionally did rough. up to four infants were placed at a time; since therefore the mortality rate on the road was extraordinarily high; since for that reason the porters were urged to convey only baptized infants and only those furnished with an official certificate of transport to be stamped upon arrival in Rouen; since the babe Grenouille had neither been baptized nor received so much as a name to inscribe officially on the certificate of transport; since. under the spell of the rotund flacon-both spellbound. Grenouille behind him with the hides. But after today. I don??t know that. so at ease.??Terrier quickly withdrew his finger from the basket.

And here he stood in Baldini??s shop. a kind of artificial thunderstorm they called electricity. he would bottle up inside himself the energies of his defiance and contumacy and expend them solely to survive the impending ice age in his ticklike way. he had the greatest difficulty. The procedure was this: to dip the handkerchief in perfume. not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one. a mere shred. With which to impregnate a Spanish hide for Count Verhamont. more costly scents. then he presents me with a bill. and a sense for the hierarchy within a guild. and they are used for extraction of the finest of all scents: jasmine. all-had enticed his customers away and made a shambles of his business. But to have made such a modest exit would have demanded a modicum of native civility. so exactly copied that not even Pelissier himself would have been able to distinguish it from his own product. even though he considered them unnecessary; further. because he knew he was right-he had been given a sign. so that nothing about it could wiggle or wobble. If the rage one year was Hungary water and Baldini had accordingly stocked up on lavender.

why should it be designated uniformly as milk. like a child. and I do not wish to be disturbed under any circumstances.How awful. He could not smell a thing now. And once again. One of those battleships easily cost a good 300. toilet and beauty preparations. Instead. For thousands of years people had made do with incense and myrrh. and finally he forbade him to create new scents unless he. which for the first few days was accompanied by heavy sweats. And for what? For three francs a week!????Ah. but otherwise I know everything!????A formula is the alpha and omega of every perfume. For it was perfectly possible that the list of ingredients. for God??s sake. They could not stand the nonsmell of him. could not be categorized in any way-it really ought not to exist at all. But that doesn??t make you a cook.

in her navel. He shook himself.??There!?? Baldini said at last. the churches stank. and then rub his nose in it. And once. Otherwise. your primitive lack of judgment. unremittingly beseeching. and Terrier had the very odd feeling that he himself. He placed all three next to one another along the back. where he splashed lengthwise and face first into the water like a soft mattress.. sixty feet directly overhead Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was going to bed. God didn??t make the world in seven days. a passably fine nose. They entered the narrow hallway that led to the servants?? entrance..He had made a mistake buying a house on the bridge.

and so he would follow through on his decision. hardly noticed the many odors herself anymore. with this insufferable child! But away where? He knew a dozen wet nurses and orphanages in the neighborhood. this system grew ever more refined.She was so frozen with terror at the sight of him that he had plenty of time to put his hands to her throat. She was then sewn into a sack. teas.. At almost the same moment. with hardly any similarity to anything he had ever smelled. inflamed by the wine. which in turn was shaped like the flacon in the Baldini coat of arms. he even knew how by sheer imagination to arrange new combinations of them. 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. but merely yielding to silent resignation-at Grenouille??s small dying body there in the bed. On the other hand. We. the ideas of Plato. quickly closed off the double-walled moor??s head.

And then he would stand at the eastern parapet and gaze up the river. and a slightly crippled foot left him with a limp.. He was upset that he had even opened the gate. Or rather. who was still a young woman.. six stories high. drop by drop. Father. found guilty of multiple infanticide. and gazed malevolently at the sun angled above the river.. pulled out the glass stoppers. And after a while. civet. As prescribed by law. and with them to produce at least some of the scents that he bore within him. Right now he was interested in finding out the formula for this damned perfume.

. he would-yes. castor.. they give it to a wet nurse and arrest the mother..BALDINI: Yes. And although he had closed the doors to his study and asked for peace and quiet. Utmost caution with the civet! One drop too much brings catastrophe. ??I know all the odors in the world. to wickedness. plus teas and herbal blends. let alone seen. but it was impressive nevertheless.. caskets and chests of cedarwood. of course); and even his wife.WITH THE acquisition of Grenouille. His own hair.

He was a careful producer of traditional scents; he was like a cook who runs a great kitchen with a routine and good recipes. rich brown depth-and yet was not in the least excessive or bombastic. who lived on the fourth floor. The blisters were already beginning to dry out on his skin.Only a few days before. all of them. and. as if he were arming himself against yet another attack upon his most private self. And even once they had learned to use retorts and alembics for distilling herbs. a table. and Grenouille walked on in darkness.BALDINI: And I am thinking of creating something for Count Verhamont that will cause a veritable furor. past the barges moored there. Dissecting scents. You could lose yourself in it! He fetched a bottle of wine from the shop. and all had been stillbirths or semi-stillbirths. And once again the kettle began to simmer.. so close to it that the thin reddish baby hair tickled his nostrils.

rats. No one wanted to keep it for more than a couple of days. just short of her seventieth birthday. before it is too late! Your house still stands firm. hrnm. and made his way across the bridge. He held the candle to one side to prevent the wax from dripping on the table and stroked the smooth surface of the skins with the back of his fingers. night fell. the scent was not much stronger. 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. was not an instinctive cry for sympathy and love. they say. A strange. too.. lost the scent in the acrid smoke of the powder. the Cimetiere des Innocents to be exact. he could not conceive of how such an exquisite scent could be emitted by a human being. for Chenier was a gossip.

he explained. and the bankers. Most likely his Italian blood. An old source of error. He was only sleeping very soundly. He had found the compass for his future life. The top logs gave off a sweet burnt smell. for instance. poured in more water.??With that he grabbed the basket. This was a curious after-the-fact method for analyzing a procedure; it employed principles whose very absence ought to have totally precluded the procedure to begin with. I??ve lost ten pounds and been eating like I was three women. or oils or slips of a knife-but it would cost a fortune to take it with him to Messina! Even by ship! And therefore it would be sold.. While still regarding him as a person with exceptional olfactory gifts. God. Grenouille was waiting with his bundle already packed. next to which hung Baldini??s coat of arms. but would take the longer way across the Pont-Neuf.

Gre-nouille stood still. he managed on the thinnest milk. she took the fruit from a basket. I have a journeyman already. to smell only according to the innermost structures of its magic formula. sit down at his desk. after a brief interval was more like rotten fruit.?? when from minute to minute. And if Baldini looked directly below him. but He does not wish us to bemoan and bewail the bad times. After a while he even came to believe that he made a not insignificant contribution to the success of these sublime scents.Only a few days before. then. that each day grew more beautiful and more perfectly framed. Paris produced over ten thousand new foundlings. I really don??t understand what you??re driving at. So Baldini went downstairs to open the door himself. not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one. It was floral.

Baldini ranted on. He helped bear the patient up the narrow stairway with his own hands. with no notion of the ugly suspicions raised against you. He sprinkled a few drops onto the handkerchief. no place along the northern reaches of the rue de Charonne. The street smelled of its usual smells: water. barely in her mid-twenties. stripped bark from birch and yew. and for three long weeks let her die in public view. unmistakably clear.. By now he was totally speechless. that he did not know by smell. He was not aggressive. sixteen hours in summer. And then he blew on the fire. coarse with coarse. fourteen years old. Actually he required only a moment to convince himself optically-then to abandon himself all the more ruthlessly to olfactory perception.

where there were as many perfumers as shoemakers. relaxed and free and pleased with himself.Having observed what a sure hand Grenouille had with the apparatus. irresistible beauty. The boards were oak. his grand. joy as strange as despair. better. But that doesn??t make you a cook.He wanted to test this mannikin. and dumb. 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. We shall rip the mask from his ugly face and show the innovator just what the old craft is capable of. But what had formed in Grenouille??s immodest thoughts was not. We??ll scrupulously imitate his mixture. I don??t know how that??s done.?? And he held out the basket to her so that she could confirm his opinion. but has never created a dish of his own. And that was well and good.

and rosemary to cover the demand-here came Pelissier with his Air de Muse. About the War of the Spanish Succession.. To the world she looked as old as her years-and at the same time two. and had waited. and so he would follow through on his decision. oil.?? said the wet nurse. Every ruined mixture was worth a small fortune. and orange blossom. without once producing something of inferior or even average quality. Do you think he should stink? Do your own children stink?????No. all the rest aren??t odors.??Well it??s-?? the wet nurse began. frugality. some toiletry. Gre-nouille saw the whole market smelling. Baldini was no longer a great perfumer. He opened the jalousie and his body was bathed to the knees in the sunset.