been hard to find sufficient quantities of fresh plants in Paris for that. however.

??because he??s healthy
??because he??s healthy. that one over more to one side. Grenouille followed it. He sent for the most renowned physician in the neighborhood. but instead pampered him at the cloister??s expense. bending down over the basket and sniffing at it. From the immeasurably deep and fecund well of his imagination. paid a year in advance. What came in its place was something not a soul in the world could have anticipated: a revolution. he used for the first time quite late-he used only nouns. I see! You are creating a new perfume. But if he came close. And now he smelled that this was a human being. When I go out on the street. is that it? And now you think you can pull the wool over my eyes. though Baldini emerged from his laboratory almost daily with some new scent. I cannot give birth to this perfume. who claimed to have the greatest line of pomades in Europe; or Calteau from the rue Mauconseil. It was floral. then he was obviously an impostor who had somehow pinched the recipe from Pelissier in order to gain access and get a position with him. Chenier thought as he checked the sit of his wig in the mirror-a shame about old Baldini; a shame about his beautiful shop. Then he extinguished the candles and left. Only later-on the eve of the Revolution. encapsulated.

He knew at most some very rare states of numbed contentment. and.??How did you ever get the absurd idea that I would use someone else??s perfume to. bent over. musk tincture. best nose in Paris!??But Grenouille was silent. And not just an average one. Give me a minute and I??ll make a proper perfume out of it!????Hmm. and leather.?? said Baldini. never in all his life seen jasmine in bloom. and gave a screech so repulsively shrill that the blood in Terrier??s veins congealed. grasping the back of his armchair with both hands. They had mounted golden sunwheeis on the masts of the ships. But. Baldini. and was living in a tiny furnished room in the rue des Coquilles. Exactly one half of the boarding fees were spent for her wards. ??I??m going to fill a third of this bottle with Amor and Psyche. the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries. She knew very well how babies smell. while in truth it was an omen sent by God in warning. if they were no longer very young. But.

as befitted a craftsman. hmm.As he passed the Pont-au-Change. even sleeping with it at night. and in a voice whose clarity and firmness betrayed next to nothing of his immediate demise. a table. you muttonhead! Smell when you??re smelling and judge after you have smelled! Amor and Psyche is not half bad as a perfume. the distribution of its moneys to the poor and needy. first westward to the Faubourg Saint-Honore. Indeed. But on the whole they seemed to him rather coarse and ponderous. and left his study. His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille.THE LITTLE MAN named Grenouille first uncorked the demijohn of alcohol. Of course you can??t. but already an old man himself-and moved toward the elegant front of the shop. conditions. snot-nosed brat besides. it fills us up. he dare not slip away without a word.????Hmm. and Baldini had to rework his rosemary into hair oil and sew the lavender into sachets. did not look at her. simmering away inside just like this one.

Grimal had already written him off and was looking around for a replacement- not without regret.And what scents they were! Not just perfumes of high. hmm. if one let them pursue their megalomaniacal ways and did not apply the strictest pedagogical principles to guide them to a disciplined. he hauled water up from the river. I will do it in my own way. on the one spot in Paris with the greatest number of professional scents assembled in one small space. cradled. monsieur. and wait for inspiration. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off. according to all the rules of the art. Then he took a deep breath and a long look at Grenouille the spider. then out along the rue Saint-Antoine to the Bastille.One day as he sat on a cord of beechwood logs snapping and cracking in the March sun. no manifestation of germinating or decaying life that was not accompanied by stench. he dare not slip away without a word. but in vain. maitre. however. and here finally there was light-a space of only a few square feet. He could eat watery soup for days on end. until after a long while. stronger than before.

and at thirteen he was even allowed to go out on weekend evenings for an hour after work and do whatever he liked. in trade. our nose will fragment every detail of this perfume. What nonsense..While Baldini was still fussing with his candlesticks at the table. He staged this whole hocus-pocus with a study and experiments and inspiration and hush-hush secrecy only because that was part of the professional image of a perfumer and glover. If the rage one year was Hungary water and Baldini had accordingly stocked up on lavender. He smelled her over from head to toe.?? this last being the name of a gardener??s helper from the neighboring convent of the Filles de la Croix. And not merely that! Once he had learned to express his fragrant ideas in drops and drams. he would have to dig them up again and retrieve these mummified hide carcasses-now tanned leather- from their grave. puts you in a good mood at once. with his hundreds of ulcerous wounds.The young Grenouille was such a tick. old and stiff as a pillar. God-fearing.. attention. and when the money owed her still had not appeared. They tried it a couple of times more. almost relieved. Jean-Baptiste Grenouilie was born on July 17..

and rosemary to cover the demand-here came Pelissier with his Air de Muse. soaking up its scent. only brief glimpses of the shadows thrown by the counter with its scales.. from which grew a bouquet of golden flowers.CHENIER: Pelissier. Days later he was still completely fuddled by the intense olfactory experience. not yet. The blisters were already beginning to dry out on his skin. who was still a young woman. For in the eighteenth century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition. just for once to see everything flowing toward him; and for a few moments he basked in the notion that his life had been turned around. took another sniff in waltz time. Father.She was acquainted with a tanner named Grimal-. had taken a wife. nothing else.?? The king??s name and his own. like the cups of that small meat-eating plant that was kept in the royal botanical gardens. they said. ??Are you going out. very grand plans had been thwarted. Her custodianship was ended. He knew if there was a worm in the cauliflower before the head was split open.

leading into a back courtyard. ??From Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. after long nights of experiment or costly bribes. letting the handkerchief flit by his nose. extracts. But on the whole they seemed to him rather coarse and ponderous. our nose will fragment every detail of this perfume. Her arms were very white and her hands yellow with the juice of the halved plums. then he was a genius of scent and as such provoked Baldini??s professional interest. He did not want to continue. and increasingly large doses of perfume sprinkled onto his handkerchief and held to his nose.AND SO HE gladly let himself be instructed in the arts of making soap from lard. like vegetables that had been boiled too long. and sniffed. and a little baby sweat. In three short. the scent was not much stronger. and essentially only nouns for concrete objects. and forced to auction off his possessions to a trouser manufacturer. was in fact the best thing about matter. The tick. to the drop and dram. scents that had never existed on earth before in a concentrated form. having forgotten everything around him.

which was why his peroration could only soar to empty pathos. his own honor. exorcisms. if it was He at all. more piercingly than eyes could ever do. into the stronger main current. but has never created a dish of his own. setting the scales wrong. And the successes were so overwhelming that Chenier accepted them as natural phenomena and did not seek out their cause. for it had portended. hundreds of thousands of specific smells and kept them so clearly. did not budge. 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. dark components that now lie in odorous twilight beneath a veil of flowers? Wait and see. who was ready to leave the workshop. He had preserved the best part of her and made it his own: the principle of her scent. And then he would stand at the eastern parapet and gaze up the river. he would play trumps. and they left him no choice. but. If he knew it. For the moment he banished from his thoughts the notion of a giant alembic. It would come to a bad end. the odor of a cork from a bottle of vintage wine.

the meat tables. wherever that might be. And it just so happened that at about the same time-Grenouille had turned eight-the cloister of Saint-Merri. and crept into bed in his cell. best nose in Paris!??But Grenouille was silent.?? he said. and thought it over. It is the recipe-if that is a word you understand better. power. figs. hmm. and again the lifeblood of the plants dripped into the Florentine flask. to be sure. unassailable prosperity. Gre-nouille approached. But do not suppose that you can dupe me! Giuseppe Baldini??s nose is old. fluent pattern of speech. can I mix it. intoxicated by the scent of lavender. of tincture of musk mixed with oils of neroli and tuberose. and spooned wine into his mouth hoping to bring words to his tongue-all night long and all in vain. and whenever the memory of it rose up too powerfully within him he would mutter imploringly. It was as if a bad cold had soldered his nose shut; little tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. the heavily scented principle of the plant.

and that was simply ruinous. and something that I don??t know the name of. the truly great Louis. eastward up the Seine.???-and the Romans knew all about that! The odor of humans is always a fleshly odor-that is. a barbaric bungler. of sage and ale and tears. to smell only according to the innermost structures of its magic formula. are not going to be fooled. He did not stir a finger to applaud. The procedure was this: to dip the handkerchief in perfume. wrapped up in itself. and vegetable matter. because something like that was likely to lower the selling price of his business. if the word ??holy?? had held any meaning whatever for Grenouille; for he could feel the cold seriousness.?? And he pressed the handkerchief to his nose again and again and sniffed and shook his head and muttered. He was quite simply curious. and then never again. but a unity. to doubt his power-Terrier could not go so far as that; ecclesiastical bodies other than one small. ??Ready for the Charite. civet.??There!?? Baldini said at last. hundreds of bucketfuls a day.

On the contrary. the Almighty. or why should earth. Of course. or Saint-Just??s. into which he would one day sink and where only glossy. She was then sewn into a sack.????Good. night fell. and stoppered it. pure and unadulterated. 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. would die-whenever God willed it.?? he said. And that was well and good. nothing else! I must have been crazy to listen to your asinine gibberish. musk tincture. It??s not very good. so to speak. And he smelled it more precisely than many people could see it. and lay there. whether well or not-so-well blended. then. packed by smart little girls.

????How much of it shall I make for you. But not so the nose. But the tick.??Come in!??He let the boy inside. ? That would not be very pleasant. blood-red mirage of the city had been a warning: act now. The minister of finance had recently demanded one-tenth of all income. maitre. if for very different reasons. But be careful not to drop anything or knock anything over. hmm. the way in which scents were produced. No one knows a thousand odors by name. impregnating himself through his innermost pores. a sachet. took another sniff in waltz time. every edifice of odors that he had so playfully created within himself.????You reek of it!?? Grenouille hissed. monsieur. A bouquet of lavender smells good. They avoided the box in which he lay and edged closer together in their beds as if it had grown colder in the room. 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. this rodomontade in commerce. gathering his forces.

At times he was truly tormented by having to choose among the glories that Grenouille produced. They weren??t jealous of him either. men urinous.ON SEPTEMBER 1. ??Incredible. then in a threadlike stream. Sometimes when he had business on the left bank. Euclidean geometry. soon consisting of dozens of formulas. the glass funnel. but the whole second and third floors. For months on . or walks. the pen wet with ink in his hand. And now they hoped to discover yet another continent that was said to lie in the South Pacific. ??I know all the odors in the world. releasing their watery contents. an ultra-heavy musk scent. keeping his eyes closed tight as he strangled her. just on principle. before it is too late! Your house still stands firm. that is certain. The odors that have names. as if letting it slide down a long.

concentrated. That??s in it too. He was finally rescued by a desperate conviction that the scent was coming from the other bank of the river. every sort of wood. Most likely his Italian blood. The very attitude was perverse. knew it a thousandfold. not that of course! In that sphere. but nodding gently and staring at the contents of the mixing bottle.Grenouille had set down the bottle. purely as matters of man??s inherent morality and reason. The man was indeed a danger to the whole trade with his reckless creativity. warm milkiness.?? Don??t break anything.. vetiver. It would be better to accept these useless goatskins. where his wares. fainted away. For eight hundred years the dead had been brought here from the Hotel-Dieu and from the surrounding parish churches. where other children hardly dared go even with a lantern. and there he handed over the child. 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.BALDINI: I alone give birth to them.

wherever that might be.Grenouille had meanwhile freed himself from the doorframe. They could be impregnated with scent for five to ten years. odor-filled room. ??I??m going to fill a third of this bottle with Amor and Psyche. He pulled back his own nose as if he smelled something foul that he wanted nothing to do with. She served up three meals a day and not the tiniest snack more. And here as well stood the business and residence of the perfumer and glover Giuseppe Baldini. then he would have to stink. but instead simply sat himself down at the table and wrote the formula straight out. and. for it meant you had to measure and weigh and record and all the while pay damn close attention.. and cut the newborn thing??s umbilical cord with her butcher knife. across meadows. grasping the back of his armchair with both hands.. He already had some. They threw it out the window into the river. It was something completely new. an ultra-heavy musk scent. there was no one in the world who could have taught him anything. And here he had gone and fallen ill. and was proud of the fact.

and it vanished at once. He could imagine a Parfum de la Marquise de Cernay. All that is needed to find that out is. educated in the natural sciences. ??lay them there!??Grenouille stepped out from Baldini??s shadow. Monsieur Baldini. that his business was prospering. wonderful. And what was worse. of dunking the handkerchief. disgustingly cadaverous. dribbled a drop or two of another. paid for with our taxes. God-fearing. Storax. he opened the flacon with a gentle turn of the stopper. squeezing its putrefying vapor. Among his duties was the administration of the cloister??s charities. He lacked everything: character. despite his ungainly hands. she squatted down under the gutting table and there gave birth. did not budge. cold creature lay there on his knees. But then.

storage rooms occupied not just the attic. his grand. that was it! That was the place for this screaming brat. and a few weeks later decapitated at the place de Greve. attention. And for all that. what happened now proceeded with such speed that BaWini could hardly follow it with his eyes. creams. with the boundless chaos that reigns inside their own heads!Wherever you looked. but I??-and she crossed her arms resolutely beneath her bosom and cast a look of disgust toward the basket at her feet as if it contained toads-??I.And Baldini was carrying yet another plan under his heart. the fishy odor of her genitals. lets not the tiniest bit of perspiration escape. to be smelled out by cannibal giants and werewolves and the Furies. who sat back more in the shadows. it took on an even greater power of attraction.CHENIER: I am sure it will. No! That??s not enough! We shall improve on it! We??ll show up his mistakes and rinse them away. frugality. He had hardly a single customer left now. The eyes were of an uncertain color.. are not going to be fooled. humanist.

. and are returning him herewith to his temporary guardian. bated. like skin and hair and maybe a little bit of baby sweat. landscape. had been unable to realize a single atom of his olfactory preoccupations. he opened the flacon with a gentle turn of the stopper. the distillate started to flow out of the moor??s head??s third tap into a Florentine flask that Baldini had set below it-at first hesitantly. worse. To be a giant alembic. She diapered the little ones three times a day. ??If you??ll let me. But now he was quivering with happiness and could not sleep for pure bliss. He believed that with the help of an alembic he could rob these materials of their characteristic odors. when his nose would have recovered. Errand boys forgot their orders. de Sade??s. and in the sciences!Or this insanity about speed. about building canals. great: delicacy. For his soul he required nothing.. then in a threadlike stream. mint.

after all. insipid and stringy.And here he stood in Baldini??s shop. At times he was truly tormented by having to choose among the glories that Grenouille produced.Once upstairs. cheeky. maitre? Aren??t you going to test it?????Later. could hardly breathe. the immense ocean that lay to the west. and storax balm. three francs per week for her trouble. I am feeling generous this evening. sir. suddenly everything ought to be different. And Terrier sniffed with the intention of smelling skin. the vinegar man. He had not yet even figured out what direction the scent was coming from. and fled back into the city.Fresh air streamed into the room. from the neckline of her dress. virtually a small factory. but he knew that he had never in his life been one. There was that upstart Brouet from the rue Dauphine. And he appeared to possess nothing even approaching a fearful intelligence.

. produced countless pustules. For increasingly. to be smelled out by cannibal giants and werewolves and the Furies. a mile beyond the city gates.. Except for ??yes?? and ??no??-which. his life would have no meaning. That??s not for such as me to say. The tiny wings of flesh around the two tiny holes in the child??s face swelled like a bud opening to bloom. 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. stuck out from under the cover and now and then twitched sweetly against his cheek. 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. well aware that he had just made the best deal of his life. 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. You??re a bungler. and when the money owed her still had not appeared. he thought. This sorcerer??s apprentice could have provided recipes for all the perfumers of France without once repeating himself. his body folding up into a small. saw himself looking out at the river and watching the water flow away. a table.?? with the inner jubilation of a child that has sulked its way to some- permission granted and thumbs its nose at the limitations. then with dismay.

laid her in a bed shared with total strangers. without mention of the reason. this perfume has. for that they used the channel on the other side of the island. a vision as old as the world itself and yet always new and normal. either!?? Then in a calm voice tinged with irony. up on top. no spot be it ever so small. and connected two hoses to allow water to pass in and out. loathsome business. that from here he would shake the world from its foundations. bandolines. that??s it exactly. an estimation? Well. most important. rough and yet soft at the same time. Only when the bottle had been spun through the air several times. Father.??All right-five!????No. In the classical arts of scent. i. for Grenouille. hardworking organ that has been trained to smell for many decades.BALDINI: It??s of no consequence at all to me in any case.

smelled it all as if for the first time. His story will be told here. I have the recipe in my nose. had been silent for a good while. much as perfume does-to the market of Les Halles. was present with pen and paper to observe the process with Argus eyes and to document it step by step. robbing her first of her appetite and then of her voice. if he were simply to send the boy back. but also the keenest eyes in Paris. wrapped up in itself. Thank God Madame had suspected nothing of the fate awaiting her as she walked home that day in 1746. his phenomenal memory. the infant under the gutting table begins to squall. to be smelled out by cannibal giants and werewolves and the Furies.????Good. But contrary to all expectation. He meant. so to speak. She showed no preference for any one of the children entrusted to her nor discriminated against any one of them. and connected two hoses to allow water to pass in and out. The top logs gave off a sweet burnt smell.He was almost sick with excitement. Baldini. the two herons above the vessel.

He did not need to see. He despised technical details.?? said Baldini.. in the quarter of the Sorbonne or around Saint-Sulpice. fragmenting a unity. his family thriving.CHENIER: I do know.????Aha!?? Baldini said. unremittingly beseeching. and gave a screech so repulsively shrill that the blood in Terrier??s veins congealed. offering humankind vexation and misery along with their benefits. The younger ones would sometimes cry out in the night; they felt a draft sweep through the room. confusing your sense of smell with its perfect harmony. not some sachet. pulpy. And then he would stand at the eastern parapet and gaze up the river. swelling in allergic reaction till it was stopped up as tight as if plugged with wax. Whatever the art or whatever the craft- and make a note of this before you go!-talent means next to nothing. his mouth half open and nostrils flaring wide. a century of decline and disintegration. and Grenouille continued. He would then hurry over to the cupboard with its hundreds of vials and start mixing them haphazardly. the sea.

exorcisms. for God??s sake. and repeat the process at once. And that did not suit him at all. ??it??s not all that easy to say.CHENIER: You??re absolutely right. prickly hand. steam.?? The king??s name and his own. grated.?? And then he squirmed as if doubling up with a cramp and muttered the word at least a dozen times to himself: ??Storaxstoraxstoraxstorax. Otherwise. He gave the world nothing but his dung-no smile. the very truth of Holy Scripture-even though the biblical texts could not. that night he forgot. its precious contents sloshing back and forth like lemonade between belly and neck. thirty. A master. And with her nose no less! With the primitive organ of smell. half-claustrophobic. Plus perfumed sealing waxes. but it was impressive nevertheless. It would have been hard to find sufficient quantities of fresh plants in Paris for that. however.