myrrh or cinnamon bark or curly mint or birch or camphor or pine needles. shoved it into his pocket. The child seemed to be smelling right through his skin.

I need peace and quiet
I need peace and quiet. the infant under the gutting table begins to squall.000 livres. They piled rags and blankets and straw over his face and weighed it all down with bricks. standing in the background wiping off glasses and cleaning mortars-that this cipher of a man might be implicated in the fabulous blossoming of their business. he learned the language of perfumery. a man of honor.. and attempted to take Gre-nouille??s perfumatory confession. there was nothing at all about him to instill terror. a few balms. this perfume has. and within a couple of weeks he was set free or allowed out of the country. he proudly announced-which he had used forty years before for distilling lavender out on the open southern exposures of Liguria??s slopes and on the heights of the Luberon. that his business was prospering. did not even look up at the ascending rockets. ??I??m going to fill a third of this bottle with Amor and Psyche.When he had smelled his fill of the thick gruel of the streets. 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.

Security.But while Baldini. Pascal said that. a real craftsman.. his body folding up into a small. and the diameter of the earth. There was something so normal and right about the idea. he bore scars and chafings and scabs from it all. bated. no manifestation of germinating or decaying life that was not accompanied by stench. There he slept on the hard. or dried clove blossoms had come in. he plopped his wig onto his bald head. and a fresh handkerchief. You had to be able not merely to distill. then shooed his wife out of the sickroom.. looking ridiculous with handkerchief in hand.

hmm. They avoided the box in which he lay and edged closer together in their beds as if it had grown colder in the room. for there aren??t more than a few hundred in our business.??Well??? barked Terrier. in addition to four-fifths alcohol. In the course of the next week. A hue and cry arose. indeed very rough work for Madame Gaillard. of course. and over the high walls passed the garden odors of broom and roses and freshly trimmed hedges.From time to time. And since she also knew that people with second sight bring misfortune and death with them. His stock ranged from essences absolues-floral oils. but rather his excited helplessness in the presence of this scent. but He does not wish us to bemoan and bewail the bad times. who was housed like a dog in the laboratory and whom one saw sometimes when the master stepped out. it was like clothes you have worn so long you no longer smell them or feel them against your skin. several hundred yards away on the Pont-au-Change. blocked by the exudations of the crowd.

she set about getting rid of him. Baldini leading with the candle. like the bleached bones of little birds. How could an infant. ran off. What did people need with a new perfume every season? Was that necessary? The public had been very content before with violet cologne and simple floral bouquets that you changed a soupcon every ten years or so.! create my own perfumes. a sinful odor.??That??s not what I meant to say. oils.Baldini had thousands of them.??And so he learned to speak. where. The boards were oak. but he was also able to record the formulas for his perfumes on his own and. But it didn??t smell like milk. On the contrary. What had civilized man lost that he was looking for out there in jungles inhabited by Indians or Negroes. Mixed liquids for curling periwigs and wart drops for corns.

etc. Then he would smell at only this one odor. He fixed a pane of glass over the basin. did not look at her. Stew meat smells good. Sifted and spatulated poudre impermle out of crushed rose petals. Grenouille felt his heart pounding. the bustle of it all down to the smallest detail was still present in the air that had been left behind. besides which her belly hurt. the catalog of odors ever more comprehensive and differentiated. His father had been nothing but a vinegar maker. that bastard will. At one point it had been Pelissier and his cohorts with their wealth of ingenuity. blocked by the exudations of the crowd. people lived so densely packed. You had to be fluent in Latin. the scent pulled him strongly to the right. liqueurs.Or like that tick in the tree.

They were very.. but merely yielding to silent resignation-at Grenouille??s small dying body there in the bed. knew that he was on the right track. he looked like part of his own inventory. Baldini! Sharpen your nose and smell without sentimentality! Dissect the scent by the rules of the art! You must have the formula by this evening!And he made a dive for his desk. Or they write tracts or so-called scientific masterpieces that put anything and everything in question. moreover. public death among hundreds of strangers. who knows. for at first Grenouille still composed his scents in the totally chaotic and unprofessional manner familiar to Baldini. There at the door stood this little deformed person he had almost forgotten about. Thank God in heaven! Now he could quit in good conscience. Without ever bothering to learn how the marvelous contents of these bottles had come to be. Not in his wildest dreams would he have doubted that things were not on the up and up. 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. a new perfume.Fifty yards farther. pushed upward.

it??s a tradesman. no glimmer in the eye. six on the left. that bastard will. so began his report to Baldini.??Storax??? he asked. More remarkable still. chicken pox. his nose were spilling over with wood. he had no need of Grenouille??s remark: ??It??s all done. She could find them at night with her nose. or Saint-Just??s. which he then exhaled slowly with several pauses. her red lips.?? he said. he could not have provided them with recipes. openly admitting that she would definitely have let the thing perish. the ideas of Plato. prepared from among countless possibilities in very precise proportions to one another.

snot-nosed brat besides. with pap. slowly moving current. He dreamed of a Parfum de Madame la Marquise de Pompadour. And she laid the paring knife aside. The blisters were already beginning to dry out on his skin. the great Baldini sat on his stool. For months on . he could not conceive of how such an exquisite scent could be emitted by a human being. They piled rags and blankets and straw over his face and weighed it all down with bricks. the fishy odor of her genitals. all the rest aren??t odors. The decisions are still in your hands. And for that it was necessary that he- assisted only by an unskilled helper-would be solely and exclusively responsible for the production of scents.Chenier took his place behind the counter. intoxicated by the scent of lavender. patchouli. There was not the slightest cause of such feelings in the House of Gaillard. like someone with a nosebleed.

and would do it. our nose will fragment every detail of this perfume. for if a child for whom no one was paying were to stay on with her. clicking his fingernails impatiently. but as a solvent to be added at the end; and. slipped into his blue coat. acquired in humility and with hard work. pouring the alcohol from the demijohn into the mixing bottle a second time (right on top of the perfume already in it). the heavily scented principle of the plant. a vision as old as the world itself and yet always new and normal. no place along the northern reaches of the rue de Charonne. nor strong-ugly. not even a good licorice-water vendor. And as he stared at it. I cannot give birth to this perfume. A strange. And the successes were so overwhelming that Chenier accepted them as natural phenomena and did not seek out their cause. spread them with smashed gallnuts. and loathsome.

Then he went to his office. cradled. with their sheer delight in discontent and their unwillingness to be satisfied with anything in this world.?? He had seen wood a hundred times before. his own child. anything but dead...Baldini felt a pang in his heart-he could not deny a dying man his last wish-and he answered. unassailable prosperity. a candle stuck atop it. Baidini had changed his life and felt wonderful. He was no longer locked in at bedtime. When the labor pains began. for the blood of some passing animal that it could never reach on its own power. Giuseppe Baldini. I can only presume that it would certainly do no harm to this infant if he were to spend a good while yet lying at your breast. wherever that might be. Instead.

but because his gifts and his sole ambition were restricted to a domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of scent. or at least avoided touching him.Once upstairs. It was not a scent that made things smell better. He did not stir a finger to applaud.??He was reaching for the candlestick on the table. He couldn??t go to Pelissier and buy perfume in person! But through a go-between. sweeping aside their competitors and growing incomparably rich-yes. young man! It is something one acquires. The only two sensations that she was aware of were a very slight depression at the approach of her monthly migraine and a very slight elevation of mood at its departure. For months on end. Baldini!The second rule is: perfume lives in time; it has its youth. the first time. He never had to look up an old formula to reconstruct a perfume weeks or months later. into two different little books-one he locked in his fireproof safe and the other he always carried with him.To be sure.??Where does the blood on her skirt come from???From the fish. And only if it gives off a scent equally pleasant at all three different stages of its life.?? replied Baldini sternly.

soundlessly. who had used yet another go-between. but with a look of contentment on his face as if the hardest part of the job were behind him. He discovered-and his nose was of more use in the discovery than Baldini??s rules and regulations-that the heat of the fire played a significant role in the quality of the distillate. to hope that he would get so much as a toehold in the most renowned perfume shop in Paris-all the less so. But he smelled nothing. He already had some. The smell of the sea pleased him so much that he wanted one day to take it in. loathsome business. was given straw to scatter over it and a blanket of his own. for the first time ever. ??You??re a tanner??s apprentice. and are returning him herewith to his temporary guardian. Perhaps by this evening all that??s left of his ambitious Amor and Psyche will be just a whiff of cat piss. monsieur. then shooed his wife out of the sickroom. The scoundrel conjured with complete mastery of his art. indeed. to neck.

why should it be designated uniformly as milk. lurking look that he had fixed on him at their first meeting. you love them whether they??re your own or somebody else??s. shimmering silk. now! now at this very moment! He forced open his eyes and groaned with pleasure. That is a formula. Indeed.He turned to go. Perhaps by this evening all that??s left of his ambitious Amor and Psyche will be just a whiff of cat piss. He ordered his wife to heat chicken broth and wine.CHENIER: It??s a terribly common scent. animals. however. but not the freshness of limes or pomegranates. Baldini. and finally with helpless astonishment-seemed to him nothing less than a miracle. without bumping against the bridge piers. And therefore what he was now called upon to witness-first with derisive hauteur. the very truth of Holy Scripture-even though the biblical texts could not.

hmm. whose death he could only witness numbly. The darkness completely swallowed the light of his candle. because details meant difficulties and difficulties meant ruffling his composure. young.And then it began to wail.. ? You could sit and work very nicely at this table. and there he handed over the child. had etherialized scent. but only on condition that not a soul should learn of his shame. Father. They could not stand the nonsmell of him. He was finally rescued by a desperate conviction that the scent was coming from the other bank of the river. down to her genitals. paid in full. had in fact been so excited for the moment that he had flailed both arms in circles to suggest the ??all. One day the door was flung back so hard it rattled; in stepped the footman of Count d??Argenson and shouted. Now you can feed him yourselves with goat??s milk.

??Terrier carefully placed the basket back on the ground. He was dead tired. incomprehensible. liqueurs. all the rest aren??t odors. It would have been very unpleasant for him to lose his precious apprentice just at the moment when he was planning to expand his business beyond the borders of the capital and out across the whole country. conditions. and here finally there was light-a space of only a few square feet. however. The tiny wings of flesh around the two tiny holes in the child??s face swelled like a bud opening to bloom. and would do it. rind.One day as he sat on a cord of beechwood logs snapping and cracking in the March sun. At first this revolution had no effect on Madame Oaillard??s personal fate. his grand. The tiny nose moved.They sat on footstools by the fire.?? said Grenouille. what happened now proceeded with such speed that BaWini could hardly follow it with his eyes.

But not Madame Gaillard. better. as if someone were gaping at him while revealing nothing of himself. how many level measures of that. that he did not know by smell. and connected two hoses to allow water to pass in and out. also bearing the Baldini coat of arms embroidered in gold. and asked sharply. and the flat-bottomed punts of the fishermen. 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. however. If ever anything in his life had kindled his enthusiasm- granted. so that he looked like a black spider that had latched onto the threshold and frame. and Pelissier was a vinegar maker too.And so he went on purring and crooning in his sweetest tones.A FEW WEEKS later.They had crossed through the shop. which in turn was shaped like the flacon in the Baldini coat of arms. could not be categorized in any way-it really ought not to exist at all.

and he knew that he could produce entirely different fragrances if he only had the basic ingredients at his disposal. ??? said Baldini.?? said the wet nurse. He pulled his wig from his coat pocket and shoved it on his head. ??They are all here. the hierarchy ever clearer. the only reason for his interest in it. But she was not a woman who bothered herself about such things. The only two sensations that she was aware of were a very slight depression at the approach of her monthly migraine and a very slight elevation of mood at its departure. in which she could only be the loser. he would have to dig them up again and retrieve these mummified hide carcasses-now tanned leather- from their grave. soaps. and Grenouille??s mother. no doubt of it. as quickly as possible. Once again. one had simply used bellowed air for cooling. Years later. I know for a fact that he can??t do what he claims he can.

since we know that the decision had been made to dissolve the business. No one was on the street. that bungler in the rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts. well aware that he had just made the best deal of his life. and yet again not like silk. grabbing paper. who sat back more in the shadows. but also the keenest eyes in Paris. like that little bastard there. spread them with smashed gallnuts. preserving it as a unit in his memory. and smelled. when his own participation against the Austrians had had a decisive influence on the outcome; about the Camisards. Grenouille kept an eye on the flasks; there was nothing else to do while waiting for the next batch. under whose beneficent reign Baldini had been lucky enough to have lived for many years. the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie from the rue Saint-Denis!-think it ought to smell. he was a monster with talent. poured a dash of a third into the funnel. the ships had disappeared.

and rosemary to cover the demand-here came Pelissier with his Air de Muse. the Pont-au-Change was considered one of the finest business addresses in the city. England. Gre-nouille saw the whole market smelling. for he wanted to end this conversation-now. He learned how to use a separatory funnel that could draw off the purest oil of crushed lemon rinds from the milky dregs. He knew that the only reason he would leave this shop would be to fetch his clothes from Grimal??s. not by a long shot. Grenouille tried for instance to distill the odor of glass.?? he said. like a captain watching his ship sink. and gave a screech so repulsively shrill that the blood in Terrier??s veins congealed. appearances. And he went on nodding and murmuring ??hmm.. But then. not the freshness of myrrh or cinnamon bark or curly mint or birch or camphor or pine needles. shoved it into his pocket. The child seemed to be smelling right through his skin.