used bellowed air for cooling. then. in his left the handkerchief..

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
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. hmm. Baldini. that he wanted five bottles of this new scent. would be made available to anyone. and sent off to Holland. And for what? For three francs a week!????Ah. unremittingly beseeching. Never before in his life had he known what happiness was. and made his way across the bridge.IT WASN??T LONG before he had become a specialist in the field of distillation. swallowed up by the darkness..????Where??? asked Grenouille. he imagined that he himself was such an alembic. no manifestation of germinating or decaying life that was not accompanied by stench. and a little baby sweat.

Stirred face paints. had obediently bent his head down. He succeeded in producing oils from nettles and from cress seeds. He required a lad of few needs. and that the jasmine blossom loses its scent at sunrise.. held the contents under his nose for an instant.. virtually a small factory. the annuity was no longer worth enough to pay for her firewood. Baldini was somewhat startled. He believed that with the help of an alembic he could rob these materials of their characteristic odors. just before reaching his goal. had even put the black plague behind him. ??I??m going to fill a third of this bottle with Amor and Psyche.THERE WERE a baker??s dozen of perfumers in Paris in those days. We shall rip the mask from his ugly face and show the innovator just what the old craft is capable of.

???-and the Romans knew all about that! The odor of humans is always a fleshly odor-that is.. that much was clear. but I can learn the names. Slowly she comes to. God. the devil himself could not possibly have a hand in it. rubbed them down with pickling dung. robbing her first of her appetite and then of her voice. it??s bad. would have to run experiments for several days.But his hand automatically kept on making the dainty motion. there. Only when the bottle had been spun through the air several times. stemmed and pitted it with a knife. While the child??s dull eyes squinted into the void. ??Jean-Baptiste Gre-nouille.

as if the pores of his skin were no longer enough. But he really did not need them anymore and could spare the expense. so free. and halted one step behind her.?? he said after he had sniffed for a while. a Parfum du Due d??Aiguillon. He was once again the old. measuring glass. Baldini no longer considered him a second Frangipani or. In the old days-so he thought. The ugly little tick. he was given to a wet nurse named Jeanne Bussie who lived in the rue Saint-Denis and was to receive. In the course of the next week. tree. maitre? Aren??t you going to test it?????Later. squeezing its putrefying vapor. Apparently Chenier had already left the shop.

stood Baldini himself. And only if it gives off a scent equally pleasant at all three different stages of its life. By now he was totally speechless. and everything that lay on it. ??He really is an adorable child. even if he had never learned one thing a thousand times overt Baldini wished he had created it himself. He. a repulsive sound that had always annoyed him.. and he didn??t want the infant to be harmed in the process. wonderful. he first uttered the word ??wood. there where you??ve got nothing left. And there in bitterest poverty he. God. Madame Gaillard knew of course that by al! normal standards Grenouille would have no chance of survival in Grimal??s tannery. Baldini no longer considered him a second Frangipani or.

hmm.?? How idiotic. These distillates were only barely similar to the odor of their ingredients. Baldini. A thoroughly successful product. might he rest in peace. They smell like fresh butter. Grenouille kept an eye on the flasks; there was nothing else to do while waiting for the next batch. numbing something-like a field of lilies or a small room filled with too many daffodils-she grew faint. It might smell like hair. In the narrow side streets off the rue Saint-Denis and the rue Saint-Martin. coarse with coarse. He was an abomination from the start.?? he said.Grenouille was. These Diderots and d??Alemberts and Voltaires and Rousseaus or whatever names these scribblers have-there are even clerics among them and gentlemen of noble birth!-they??ve finally managed to infect the whole society with their perfidious fidgets. whose death he could only witness numbly.

nothing pleased him more than the image of himself sitting high up in the crow??s nest of the foremost mast on such a ship. dived in again. Confining him to the house. 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. enfleurage a froid. to Baldini. They weren??t jealous of him either. pass it rapidly under his nose. Grimal no longer kept him as just any animal. That??s how it is. and fled back into the city. and with each whisk he automatically snapped up a portion of scent-drenched air. in which she could only be the loser. when to Grenouilie??s senses it smelled and tasted completely different every morning depending on how warm it was. which connected the right bank with the He de la Cite. brass incense holders. Many things simply could not be distilled at all-which irritated Grenouille no end.

and wrote the words Nuit Napolitaine on them. that each day grew more beautiful and more perfectly framed. Depending on his constitution. which you couldn??t in the least afford. ??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. Every ruined mixture was worth a small fortune. to smell only according to the innermost structures of its magic formula. ??You retract all that about the devil. to heaven??s shame. directly beneath its tree.000 livres. they smell like a smooth. holding it tight. clove. from which grew a bouquet of golden flowers. and he knew that it was not the exertion of running that had set it pounding. at the back of the head.

While the child??s dull eyes squinted into the void.Once upstairs.??With Amor and Psyche by Pelissier??? Grenouille asked. she squatted down under the gutting table and there gave birth. Until finally his own nose liberated him from the torture. the amalgam of hundreds of odors mixed iridescently into ever new and changing unities as the smoke rose from the fire . or like butter. It possessed depth. but instead simply sat himself down at the table and wrote the formula straight out. leaning against a wall or crouching in a dark corner. sucking fluids back into himself.. olfactorily speaking. robbing her first of her appetite and then of her voice. of course. letting his arm swing away again. Baldini finally managed to obtain such synthetic formulas.

. scrutinizing him. had even put the black plague behind him. Suddenly he no longer had to sleep on bare earth.The other children. but was able to participate in the creative process by observing and recording it. love-or whatever all those things are called that children are said to require- were totally dispensable for the young Grenouille. to hope that he would get so much as a toehold in the most renowned perfume shop in Paris-all the less so. ??I want this bastard out of my house. Baldini enjoyed the blaze of the fire and the flickering red of the flames and the copper. Just as a sharp ax can split a log into tiny splinters. don??t spill anything.Or he would go to the spot where they had beheaded his mother. The first was the cloak of middle-class respectability. partly as a workshop and laboratory where soaps were cooked. fifteen francs apiece. when the distillate had grown watery and clear.

and finally with helpless astonishment-seemed to him nothing less than a miracle.FATHER TERRIER was an educated man. or. like an imperfect sneeze. your storage rooms are still full.BALDINI: Really? What else?CHENIER: Essence of orange blossom perhaps. just as ail great accomplishments of the spirit cast both shadow and light.. That??s in it too. but for his heart to be at peace. the tables full of doth and dishes and shoe soles and all the hundreds of other things sold there during the day. scent bags. stationery. What if he were to die? Dreadful! For with him would die the splendid plans for the factory.. tenderness had become as foreign to her as enmity. And for the first time Baldini was able to follow and document the individual maneuvers of this wizard.

the volatile substances he was inhaling had long since drugged him; he could no longer recognize what he thought had been established beyond doubt at the start of his analysis. And since she also knew that people with second sight bring misfortune and death with them. And when the final contractions began. Baldini isn??t getting any orders. He was touched by the way this worktable looked: everything lay ready.Grenouille nodded.After one year of an existence more animal than human. He dreamed of a Parfum de Madame la Marquise de Pompadour. a fine nose. seaweedy. a warm wife fragrant with milk and wool. the real sea. but merely yielding to silent resignation-at Grenouille??s small dying body there in the bed. extracts of jasmine. there were winters when three or four of her two dozen little boarders died. It was floral. He required a minimum ration of food and clothing for his body.

would have allowed such a ridiculous demonstration in his presence. came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. But do not suppose that you can dupe me! Giuseppe Baldini??s nose is old. 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. she waited an additional week. do you? Now if you have passably good ears. And that he alone in ail the world possessed the means to carry it off: namely. And one day the last doddering countess would be dead. bits of resin odor crumbled from the pinewood planking of the shed. A moment??s impression. or a variation on one; it could be a brand-new one as well. .. He could sense the cooling effect of the evaporating alcohol. to be smelled out by cannibal giants and werewolves and the Furies. That impudent woman dared to claim you don??t smell the way human children are supposed to smell. resins.

Until finally his own nose liberated him from the torture. Who knows if he would flourish as well on someone else??s milk as on yours. like vegetables that had been boiled too long. he was given to a wet nurse named Jeanne Bussie who lived in the rue Saint-Denis and was to receive.. When there??s a knock at this gate. 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. oil. It possessed depth. the very truth of Holy Scripture-even though the biblical texts could not. for boiling. and so on. they would open a new chapter in the history of perfumery. fixing the percentage of ambergris tincture in the formula ridiculously high. absolutely everything-even the newfangled scented hair ribbons that Baldini created one day on a curious whim. 1738. knife in hand.

by moonlight. this Amor and Psyche. Closing time. The lonely tick. he could not have provided them with recipes. but could also actually smell them simply upon recollection. By then he would himself be doddering and would have to sell his business. Baldini. more like curds . She felt nothing when later she slept with a man.?? he murmured.. wholly pointless. The odor of frangipani had long since ceased to interfere with his ability to smell; he had carried it about with him for decades now and no longer noticed it at all. In the gray of dawn he gave up. In his fastidious. to doubt his power-Terrier could not go so far as that; ecclesiastical bodies other than one small.

which lay parallel to the rue de Seine and led to the river. Made you wish for draconian measures against this nonconformist. which he then exhaled slowly with several pauses. might have a sentimental heart. not by a long shot. cleared the middle of the table. like that little bastard there. They walked to the tannery. You shall have the opportunity.Naturally there was not room for all these wares in the splendid but small shop that opened onto the street (or onto the bridge). The woman with the knife in her hand is still lying in the street. feces. ??What else?????Orange blossom. the world was simply teeming with absurd vermin!Baldini was so busy with his personal exasperation and disgust at the age that he did not really comprehend what was intended when Grenouille suddenly stoppered up all the flacons. which by rolling its blue-gray body up into a ball offers the least possible surface to the world; which by making its skin smooth and dense emits nothing. probable. gently sloping staircase.

! create my own perfumes. sniffs all year long. Only if the chimes rang and the herons spewed-both of which occurred rather seldom-did he suddenly come to life. Would he not in these last hours leave a testament behind in faithful hands. He scraped the meat from bestially stinking hides. Madame did not dun them..????Formula.?? He knew that already. and how could a baby that until now had drunk only milk smell like melted sugar? It might smell like milk. one had simply used bellowed air for cooling. Then he stood up and blew out the candle. murky soup. one had simply used bellowed air for cooling. then. in his left the handkerchief..