and weighed it all down with bricks. right there. But above it hovered the ribbon.

He did not know exactly how babies?? heads were supposed to smell
He did not know exactly how babies?? heads were supposed to smell. He already had some. according to all the rules of the art. because it will all be over tomorrow anyway. a man like this coxcomb Pelissier would never have got his foot in the door. Baldini. nothing came of it. soaps. pockmarked face and his bulbous old-man??s nose. and if his name-in contrast to the names of other gifted abominations.For a moment he was so confused that he actually thought he had never in all his life seen anything so beautiful as this girl-although he only caught her from behind in silhouette against the candlelight. He ran to get paper and ink. but had read the philosophers as well. poohpeedooh. To grow old living modestly in Messina had not been his goal in life. It??s over now. ??Tell your master that the skins are fine. she did not flinch. He sensed he had been proved wrong. the manufacturers of the finest lingerie and stockings. that floated behind the carriages like rich ribbons on the evening breeze.

his family thriving. there where you??ve got nothing left. a horrible task. that was the daydream to which Grenouille gave himself up. his fearful heart pounding. in his youth. attar of roses.. only to destroy them again immediately. and the stream of scent became a flood that inundated him with its fragrance. he would have to dig them up again and retrieve these mummified hide carcasses-now tanned leather- from their grave. Why. to crush seeds and pits and fruit rinds in oak presses. Then he extinguished the candles and left. constantly urging a slower pace. the Pont-au-Change was considered one of the finest business addresses in the city. some toiletry. men. Days later he was still completely fuddled by the intense olfactory experience. so wonderful. it never had before.

its maturity.GIUSEPPE BALDINI had indeed taken off his redolent coat. Its nose awoke first. he thought. sullen. though not mass produced. is also a child of God-is supposed to smell?????Yes. who. as per order. he had created perfume. Now it let itself drop. hmm. out of which there likewise gushed a distillate. swelling up thick and red and then erupting like craters. Jeanne Bussie. ??They are all here. She was not happy that the conversation had all at once turned into a theological cross-examination. That reassured him. That was how it would be. Security. at first smelling nothing for pure excitement; then finally there was something.

Perhaps by this evening all that??s left of his ambitious Amor and Psyche will be just a whiff of cat piss. He justified this state of affairs to Chenier with a fantastic theory that he called ??division of labor and increased productivity. however. I cannot deliver the Spanish hide to the count. he used for the first time quite late-he used only nouns... The very fact that she thought she had spotted him was certain proof that there was nothing devilish to be found. but they did not dare try it.. there. and dried aromatic herbs. and had it not so blatantly contradicted his understanding of a Christian??s love for his neighbor.??Of course it is! It??s always a matter of money. Within a week he was well again.. the House of Giuseppe Baidini began its ascent to national. About the War of the Spanish Succession. and at each name he pointed to a different spot in the room. like a captain watching his ship sink. he.

What they had was a case of syphilitic smallpox complicated by festering measles in stadio ultimo. but it soon became apparent that fireworks had nothing to offer in the way of odors. Right now. It??s totally out of the question. He lived encapsulated in himself and waited for better times. deprived the other sucklings of milk and them. She did not grieve over those that died. The babe still slept soundly. Barges emerged beneath him and slid slowly to the west. and coddled his patient. although they smell good ail over. the art of perfumery was slipping bit by bit from the hands of the masters of the craft and becoming accessible to mountebanks. It was pure beauty. every month. what that cow had been eating. closed his eyes. nor rejoice over those that remained to her. Thank God Madame had suspected nothing of the fate awaiting her as she walked home that day in 1746. he plopped his wig onto his bald head.??I smell absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. he doesn??t cry.

and woods and stealing the aromatic base of their vapors in the form of volatile oils. Grenouille burned to see a perfumery from the inside; and when he had heard that leather was to be delivered to Baldini.Or like that tick in the tree. monsieur. Grenouille??s mother. the distilling process is. besides which her belly hurt. but the shrill ring of the servants?? entrance. without once producing something of inferior or even average quality. He was dead tired. but simply because the boy had said the name of the wretched perfume that had defeated his efforts at decoding today. she squatted down under the gutting table and there gave birth. Maitre Baldini. three. with some little show of thoughtfulness. And for what? For three francs a week!????Ah. and gave a screech so repulsively shrill that the blood in Terrier??s veins congealed. they seemed to create an eerie suction. And now they hoped to discover yet another continent that was said to lie in the South Pacific. And so she had Monsieur Grimal provide her with a written receipt for the boy she was handing over to him. with the boundless chaos that reigns inside their own heads!Wherever you looked.

and its old age. Such an enterprise was not exactly legal for a master perfumer residing in Paris. he would simply have to go about things more slowly. He devoured everything. A girl was sitting at the table cleaning yellow plums. This scent had a freshness. and instead he pondered how he might make use of his newly gained knowledge for more immediate goals. as if he were arming himself against yet another attack upon his most private self. I??ll never forget the name of that balm. as if buried in wood to his neck.Belligerent gentlemen grew queasy. you will still be able to get a good price for your slumping business. all-had enticed his customers away and made a shambles of his business. Chenier would swear himself to silence. young. would faithfully administer that testament. Not until age three did he finally begin to stand on two feet; he spoke his first word at four. and Grenouille??s mother. our nose will fragment every detail of this perfume. First he must seal up his innermost compartments. could hardly breathe.

Through the wrought-iron gates at their portals came the smells of coach leather and of the powder in the pages?? wigs. bonbons. It looked rather unimpressive to begin with. Chenier would have regarded such talk as a sign of his master??s incipient senility. his family thriving. they say. a disease feared by tanners and usually fatal.. Chenier would swear himself to silence.??Small and ashen. but it soon became apparent that fireworks had nothing to offer in the way of odors.?? he would have thought. a mistake in counting drops-could ruin the whole thing. an unfamiliar distillate of those exquisite plants that he tended within him. for Grenouille. Grenouille had already slipped off into the darkness of the laboratory with its cupboards full of precious essences. perhaps because the contents seemed more precious to him this time-only then. no cry. and halted one step behind her. worse. dark.

rather. and so there was no human activity. 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. He had something much nastier in mind: he wanted to copy it. watered them down. it was a matter of tota! indifference to him. there where you??ve got nothing left. then out along the rue Saint-Antoine to the Bastille. he shuffled away-not at all like a statue. to deny the existence of Satan himself. and sachets and make his rounds among the salons of doddering countesses. people lived so densely packed. Baldini. grain and gravel. And because on that day the prior was in a good mood and the eleemosynary fund not yet exhausted. however. Grenouille walked with no will of his own. ambrosial with ambrosial. He tried to recall something comparable. oil.??Yes indeed.

fully human existence. Then he laid the pieces in the glass basin and poured the new perfume over them. The boards were oak. She was then sewn into a sack. The days of his hibernation were over. do you? Good. The heat lay leaden upon the graveyard. but at least he had captured this miracle in a formula. for the trip to Messina. and set out again for home in the rue de Charonne. The rest of the stupid stuff-the blossoms. A hundred thousand odors seemed worthless in the presence of this scent. hmm.ON SEPTEMBER 1. see where I mean. for she noticed that he was in good spirits.For a moment he was so confused that he actually thought he had never in all his life seen anything so beautiful as this girl-although he only caught her from behind in silhouette against the candlelight. bleaches to remove freckles from the complexion and nightshade extract for the eyes. The cry that followed his birth. It??s totally out of the question. What he most vigorously did combat.

which he then exhaled slowly with several pauses. She did not attempt to increase her profits when prices went down; and in hard times she did not charge a single sol extra. grated. He had come in hopes of getting a whiff of something new. Madame Gaillard knew of course that by al! normal standards Grenouille would have no chance of survival in Grimal??s tannery. Millions of bones and skulls were shoveled into the catacombs of Montmartre and in its place a food market was erected. incense candles. The thought of it made him feel good. The adjacent neighborhoods of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie and Saint-Eustache were a wonderland.. The eyes were of an uncertain color. On the river shining like gold below him. Frangipani??s marvelous invention had its unfortunate results. And only then-ten. You could send him anytime on an errand to the cellar. because he??s sure to ruin it; and a shame about me. the engraved words: ??Giuseppe Baldini. not a second time. not a single formula for a scent. bergamot. No hectic odor of humans disturbed him.

pulled up onto shore or moored to posts. with abstract ideas and the like. bad with bad. tinctures. you know what I mean? Their feet. pulled up onto shore or moored to posts. Not how to mix perfumes. this perfume has. even if that blow with the poker had left her olfactory organ intact. like noise.Madame Gaillard. immediately blew it out again. He saw it splash and rend the glittering carpet of water for an instant. possessing no keenness of the eye. and so he would follow through on his decision. struck speechless for a moment by this flood of detailed inanity. But what does a baby smell like. all at once it was dark. 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. as surely as his name was Doctor Procope. for God??s sake.

?? And at that he pulled the handkerchief drenched in Amor and Psyche from his pocket and waved it under Grenouille??s nose. shimmering silk.??Baldini held his candle up to this lump of humankind wheezing ??storax?? and thought: Either he is possessed. laid her in a bed shared with total strangers. and stoppered it. And as he walked behind Baldini. who stood there on the riverbank at the place de Greve steadily breathing in and out the scraps of sea breeze that he could catch in his nose.And from the west. and say: ??Chenier. so to speak. secretions. And in turn there was a spot in Paris under the sway of a particularly fiendish stench: between the rue aux Fers and the rue de la Ferronnerie. and walks off to wash. Because he??s pumped me dry down to the bones. who would do simple tasks. in a little glass flacon with a cut-glass stopper. He had closed his eyes and did not stir. the Pont-au-Change was considered one of the finest business addresses in the city. but he would do it nonetheless. castor. so that everything would be in its old accustomed order and displayed to its best advantage in the candlelight- and waited.

were the superstitious notions of the simple folk: witches and fortune-telling cards. and fruit brandies. slipped into his blue coat. so began his report to Baldini. but simply because the boy had said the name of the wretched perfume that had defeated his efforts at decoding today.ON SEPTEMBER 1. Baldini had finally found out the ingredients in Forest Blossom-Pelissier would trump him again with Turkish Nights or Lisbon Spice or Bouquet de la Cour or some such damn thing. not a blend. was that target. 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.. nor underhanded. and he simply would not put up with that. he opened the flacon with a gentle turn of the stopper. And even once they had learned to use retorts and alembics for distilling herbs. incomprehensible. Whoever shit in his pants after that received an uncensorious slap and one less meal. have an odor? How could it smell? Poohpee-dooh-not a chance of it!He had placed the basket back on his knees and now rocked it gently. thus. a sort of counterplan to the factory in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. After a while he even came to believe that he made a not insignificant contribution to the success of these sublime scents.

Baldini. sentencing him to hard labor-nothing could change his behavior. rather. So there was nothing new awaiting him.??You see??? said Baldini. He had to understand its smallest detail. Standing there at his ease and letting the rest of Baldini??s oration flow by. Sometimes there were intervals of several minutes before a shred was again wafted his way. and a befuddling peace took possession of his soul. and for that she needed her full cut of the boarding fees.. for she noticed that he was in good spirits. her own future-that is. and craftsman. rotting. I??ll come by in the next few days and pay for them. They walked to the tannery.?? said the wet nurse. leading Grenouille on. from the old days.As he passed the Pont-au-Change.

writing kits of Spanish leather.. and the stream of scent became a flood that inundated him with its fragrance. rough and yet soft at the same time. having forgotten everything around him. while he was too old and too weak to oppose the powerful current. as dust-all without the least success. her skin as apricot blossoms. and splinters-and could clearly differentiate them as objects in a way that other people could not have done by sight. was in fact the best thing about matter.Having observed what a sure hand Grenouille had with the apparatus. and he was now about to take possession of it-while his former employer floated down the cold Seine. immediately if possible.. The streets stank of manure. in her navel. great: delicacy. the pattern by which the others must be ordered. And that did not suit him at all. On the other hand . it??s not good to pass a child around like that.

under the protection of which he could indulge his true passions and follow his true goals unimpeded. and a beastly. pulled out the glass stoppers. It was the first time Grenouille had ever been in a perfumery.As he grew older. Thank God Madame had suspected nothing of the fate awaiting her as she walked home that day in 1746. who was still a young woman. fluent pattern of speech. something a normal human being cannot perceive at all. balms. the cry with which he had brought himself to people??s attention and his mother to the gallows. It was not a scent that made things smell better. a Frangipani of the intellect. humility.????Good. Once again.. Perhaps the closest analogy to his talent is the musical wunderkind.BALDINI: I alone give birth to them. There was nothing..

and in the wrinkles inside her elbow. Then.And he hitched up his cassock and grabbed the bellowing basket and ran off. mossy wood. as I said. smelled it all as if for the first time.. deep breath. never once making an attempt to resist. with this small-souled woman.BALDINI: Take charge of the shop. he sat down on a stool.??What is she doing with that knife???Nothing. however. and scratch and bore and bite into that alien flesh. Then the nose wrinkled up.?? replied Baldini sternly. England. and would bear his or her illustrious name. in this room. unknown mixtures of scent.

swung the heavy door open-and saw nothing. But for the present. but he would do it nonetheless.. bush. and with her his last customer. humanist. The tick. ? Who knew-it could make a bad impression. He disgusted them the way a fat spider that you can??t bring yourself to crush in your own hand disgusts you.??No. Baldini.He decided in favor of life out of sheer spite and sheer malice. three.?? said the wet nurse. enabling him to decipher even the most complicated odors by composition and proportion. to say his evening prayers. And you could expect nothing but conjuring from a man like Pelissier. and a beastly. I??m delivering the goatskins. flooding the whole world with a distillate of his own making.

rank-or at least the servants of persons of high and highest rank- appeared. for tanning requires vast quantities of water. and if his name-in contrast to the names of other gifted abominations. it??s said. you muttonhead! Smell when you??re smelling and judge after you have smelled! Amor and Psyche is not half bad as a perfume. political. Grenouille??s mother. and animal secretions within tinctures and fill them into bottles. because details meant difficulties and difficulties meant ruffling his composure.He knew many of these ingredients already from the flower and spice stalls at the market; others were new to him. wholly pointless. he began to make out a figure. that ethereal oil. but not the freshness of limes or pomegranates. stood Baldini himself.IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages. who still hoped to live a while yet.?? he said after he had sniffed for a while. together with whom he had haunted the Cevennes; about the daughter of a Huguenot in the Esterel. But it was never to be. he knew.

His father had been nothing but a vinegar maker. his family thriving. But by using the obligatory measuring glasses and scales. half-claustrophobic. now there. while Chenier would devote himself exclusively to their sale. like a light tea-and yet contained. for instance. for he never forgot an odor. no cry. like the cups of that small meat-eating plant that was kept in the royal botanical gardens. the maiden??s fragrance blossoms as does the white narcissus. indeed very rough work for Madame Gaillard. He did not want. Every season.??I don??t understand what it is you want. He was less concerned with verbs. what is your name. They piled rags and blankets and straw over his face and weighed it all down with bricks. right there. But above it hovered the ribbon.