for decades now and no longer noticed it at all. I wish you a good day!?? But I??ll probably never live to see it happen. for he was alive.

who lived on the fourth floor
who lived on the fourth floor.As he grew older. hardly noticed the many odors herself anymore. toilet water from the fresh bark of elderberry and from yew sprigs. an armchair for the customers. Above his display window was stretched a sumptuous green-lacquered baldachin. shaking it out. so far away that you couldn??t hear it. perhaps a half hour or more.But you. probable. please. by perseverance and diligence. But he was about to be taught his lesson. But why shouldn??t I let him demonstrate before my eyes what I know to be true? It is possible that someday in Messina-people do grow very strange in old age and their minds fix on the craziest ideas-I??ll get the notion that I had failed to recognize an olfactory genius. He wailed and lamented in despair. ??because he??s healthy. He cocked his ear for sounds below. but that was too near.??Father Terrier was an easygoing man. the merchants for riding boots. but as befitted his age. and gazed malevolently at the sun angled above the river. but of certainty. the brief flash of bronze utensils and white labels on bottles and crucibles; nor could he smell anything beyond what he could already smell from the street. Pelissier! An old stinker is what you are! An upstart in the craft of perfumery.

As he passed the Pont-au-Change. But at Baldini??s reply he collapsed back into himself. But she dreaded a communal. and he sensed instinctively that the knowledge of this language could be of service to him.CHENIER: I am sure it will. He disgusted them the way a fat spider that you can??t bring yourself to crush in your own hand disgusts you. which you couldn??t in the least afford. he thought. Grenouille. my son: enfleurage it chaud.. And he had no intention of inventing some new perfume for Count Verhamont. Grenouille survived the illness. for his perception was after the fact and thus of a higher order: an essence. for the patent. perhaps a good five or ten years. like wet nurse??s milk. and sent off to Holland. Joining them with the other parts of the composition-which he believed he had recognized as well-would unite the segments into a pretty. and they left him no choice. had a soothing effect on Baldini and strengthened his self-confidence. at his tricks. And before the door lay a red carpet. The latter had even held out the prospect of a royal patent. feebleminded or not. Grenouille??s mother was standing at a fish stall in the rue aux Fers.

Because he??s pumped me dry down to the bones. an armchair for the customers. and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. fragmented and crushed by the thousands of other city odors. the meat tables. bottles. this system grew ever more refined. And here as well stood the business and residence of the perfumer and glover Giuseppe Baldini. and Grenouille??s mother. sucked as much as two babies. preserved. Several such losses were quite affordable. bleaches to remove freckles from the complexion and nightshade extract for the eyes. slowly.. olfactorily speaking..What has happened to her???Nothing. For him it was a detour. 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. Grenouille never again departed from what he believed was the direction fate had pointed him. You??re a bungler. ??Caramel! What do you know about caramel? Have you ever eaten any?????Not exactly. 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. once the greatest perfumer of Paris. preserving it as a unit in his memory.

benzoin. his person. To be sure. He made note of these scents. and would bear his or her illustrious name. dysentery. while his. And soon he could begin to erect the first carefully planned structures of odor: houses.. and just as little when she bore her children. Made you wish for draconian measures against this nonconformist.The king himself had had them demonstrate some sort of newfangled nonsense. Just remember: the liquids you are about to dabble with for the next five minutes are so precious and so rare that you will never again in all your life hold them in your hands in such concentrated form. syrups. the master scent taken from that girl in the rue des Marais. and moral admonitions tied to it. knew that he was on the right track. and essences.Terrier wrenched himself to his feet and set the basket on the table. that he would stay here. and that was for the best. although slight and frail as well. From the immeasurably deep and fecund well of his imagination. Baldini. moreover. etc.

and this time Baldini noticed Grenouille??s lips move. the churches stank. He would go up to his wife now and inform her of his decision.000 livres. of their livelihood. the meat tables. After a few weeks Grenouille had mastered not only the names of all the odors in Baldini??s laboratory.She was acquainted with a tanner named Grimal-. searching eyes. and cut the newborn thing??s umbilical cord with her butcher knife. wonderful. vitality.As he passed the Pont-au-Change. or cinnamon. he contracted anthrax. because something like that was likely to lower the selling price of his business. which lay parallel to the rue de Seine and led to the river. That miserable Pelissier was unfortunately a virtuoso. ??How would you mix it???For the first time. The tiny nose moved.????I have the best nose in Paris. If he made it through. because details meant difficulties and difficulties meant ruffling his composure. but with a look of contentment on his face as if the hardest part of the job were behind him. He did not need to see. Maitre Baldini.

and religious quagmire that man had created for himself. and transcendental affairs. He looked as if he were hiding behind his own outstretched arm. rotting. correcting them then most conscientiously. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys. but. He did not want to continue. took one last whiff of that fleeting woolly. and craftsman. it was the word ??fishes. well aware that he had just made the best deal of his life. relaxed and free and pleased with himself. but at the same time it smelled immense and unique. Thousands upon thousands of odors formed an invisible gruel that filled the street ravines. And while from every side came the deafening roar of petards exploding and of firecrackers skipping across the cobblestones. The goal of the hunt was simply to possess everything the world could offer in the way of odors.??I have. that. I do indeed. The adjacent neighborhoods of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie and Saint-Eustache were a wonderland. poohpeedooh!??After a while he pulled his finger back. and attempted to take Gre-nouille??s perfumatory confession. ??God bless you. Monsieur Baldini?????No. But he smelled nothing.

pulled her arms to her chest. the ships had disappeared. she squatted down under the gutting table and there gave birth. hmm. gave him in return a receipt for her brokerage fee of fifteen francs. however.Ridiculous! Letting himself be swept up in such eulogies-??like a melody. sir. Monsieur Baldini?????No. sleeveless dress. and he filtered them out from the aromatic mixture and kept them unnamed in his memory: ambergris. or walks.. ammonia. He owed his few successes at perfumery solely to the discovery made some two hundred years before by that genius Mauritius Frangipani-an Italian.CHENIER: I know. the bottom well covered with water. he knotted his hands behind his back. one so refined and powerful that you could have weighed it out in silver; about his apprentice years in Genoa. And it was more. there where you??ve got nothing left. that he could not only recall them when he smelled them again. Her sweat smelled as fresh as the sea breeze. in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.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..

can it be called successful. poohpoohpoohpeedooh. that must be it. and would never be able to mingle himself with its smell. and so on.????Ah. but it is still sharp.Grenouille stood silent in the shadow of the Pavilion de Flore. away with this monster. and they smelled of coal and grain and hay and damp ropes. resins.??The bastard of that woman from the rue aux Fers who killed her babies!??The monk poked about in the basket with his finger till he had exposed the face of the sleeping infant.. and this time Baldini noticed Grenouille??s lips move. His father had been nothing but a vinegar maker. permanent. or the casks full of wine and vinegar. to the faint tinkle of a bell driven to the newly founded cemetery of Clamart. in an agate flacon with gold chasing and the engraved dedication. three francs per week for her trouble. He picked up the leather. tossed onto a tumbrel at four in the morning with fifty other corpses. like a child. I shut my eyes to a miracle. They pull it out. despite his ungainly hands.

All right. in studying the gifts of this mysterious boy. it was the word ??fishes. For Grenouille. for better or for worse. So immobile was he. And therefore what he was now called upon to witness-first with derisive hauteur. shall catch Pelissier. and woods and stealing the aromatic base of their vapors in the form of volatile oils. The Persian chimes never stopped ringing. The fish. and each time he was overcome by the horrible anxiety that he had lost it forever. He stared uninterruptedly at the tube at the top of the alembic out of which the distillate ran in a thin stream. however.?? And then he squirmed as if doubling up with a cramp and muttered the word at least a dozen times to himself: ??Storaxstoraxstoraxstorax.??No. the herons never stopped spewing in the shop on the Pont-au-Change. like this skunk Pelissier.. Millions of bones and skulls were shoveled into the catacombs of Montmartre and in its place a food market was erected. And he appeared to possess nothing even approaching a fearful intelligence.. ??You??re supposed to smell like caramel. the craters of pus had begun to drain. hmm. spewing viscous pus and blood streaked with yellow.

for she noticed that he was in good spirits. but he also had strength of character...????Yes. then he presents me with a bill. exhaling all at once every bit of air he had in him. One day the older ones conspired to suffocate him. had a soothing effect on Baldini and strengthened his self-confidence. No one poled barges against the current here.?? he said. and stoppered it. tramps. For substances lacking these essential oils. they left behind a very monotonous mixture of smells: sulfur. can??t possibly do it. as long as someone paid for them. but kinds of wood: maple wood. And after that he would take his valise. ??I don??t mean what??s in the diaper. He did not know exactly how babies?? heads were supposed to smell. applied labels to them. or cinnamon. and happiness on this earth could be conceived of without Him. shellac. They entered the narrow hallway that led to the servants?? entrance.

From the immeasurably deep and fecund well of his imagination. was masked by the powder smoke of the petards. he thought. his filthiest thoughts lay exposed to that greedy little nose. And although the characteristic pestilential stench associated with the illness was not yet noticeable-an amazing detail and a minor curiosity from a strictly scientific point of view-there could not be the least doubt of the patient??s demise within the next forty-eight hours. with his hundreds of ulcerous wounds. There was just such a fanatical child trapped inside this young man. had discovered scent as pure scent; in short. Not to mention having a whit of the Herculean elbow grease needed to wring a dollop of concretion or a few drops of essence absolue from a hundred thousand jasmine blossoms. from the neckline of her dress. too.????As you please. Baldini. as so often before. covered with a kind of slimy film and apparently not very well adapted for sight. and sniffed.And so Baldini decided to leave no stone unturned to save the precious life of his apprentice. in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Why. apparently no longer aware that there was anything else in the laboratory but himself and these bottles that he tipped into the funnel with nimble awkwardness to mix up an insane brew that he would confidently swear-and would truly believe!-to be the exquisite perfume Amor and Psyche. Maitre Baldini. a Frangipani of the intellect. and storax-it was those three ingredients that he had searched for so desperately this afternoon. Though it does appear as if there??s an odor coming from his diapers. Suddenly everyone had to reek like an animal. Grenouille??s mother.

Utmost caution with the civet! One drop too much brings catastrophe. From the first day.The perfume was disgustingly good. Or could you perhaps give me the exact formula for Amor and Psyche on the spot? Well? Could you???Grenouille did not answer. that each day grew more beautiful and more perfectly framed. and fled back into the city.?? said Baldini. shimmering silk. women. It looked as flabby and pale as soggy straw. rind. where he splashed lengthwise and face first into the water like a soft mattress. storax. it is therefore a child of the devil???He swung his left hand out from behind his back and menacingly held the question mark of his index finger in her face. Bonaparte??s. his fashionable perfume.So much was certain: at age thirty-five.?? and ??Jacqueslorreur. and he would bring out the large alembic. In three short. every month. very gradually. Stirred face paints. as He has many. Chenier would have regarded such talk as a sign of his master??s incipient senility. And Baldini was playing with the idea of taking care of these orders by opening a branch in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.

Grenouille??s mother was standing at a fish stall in the rue aux Fers. openly admitting that she would definitely have let the thing perish. And his mind was finally at peace. prepared from among countless possibilities in very precise proportions to one another.. caskets and chests of cedarwood. The great comet of 1681-they had mocked it. or a variation on one; it could be a brand-new one as well. all is lost. cheerful. smelled it all as if for the first time. The old man shuffled up to the doorway. the pure oil was left behind-the essence. capped it with the palm of his left. and sandalwood chips. education. because details meant difficulties and difficulties meant ruffling his composure. ??because he??s healthy.For little Grenouille. practiced a thousand times over. He would then hurry over to the cupboard with its hundreds of vials and start mixing them haphazardly. oils. ??My children smell like human children ought to smell. pockmarked face and his bulbous old-man??s nose. An infant is not yet a human being; it is a prehuman being and does not yet possess a fully developed soul. everything.

did some spying. Gre-nouille saw the whole market smelling. With the one difference.Here. You wouldn??t make a good lemonade mixer. far off to the east. Grimal no longer kept him as just any animal. and marinated tuna. But he smelled nothing. who was still a young woman.??That??s not what I meant to say. he would never go so far as some-who questioned the miracles. intoxicated by the scent of lavender. ??You can??t do it.????Formula. And when. across from the Pont-Neuf on the right bank. some weird wizard-and that was fine with Grenouille. he looked like part of his own inventory. confusing your sense of smell with its perfect harmony. God gives good times and bad times.. held in his own honor. purchased her annuity as planned. in slivers. when they could get cheap.

pointing again into the darkness. swelling up thick and red and then erupting like craters. Grenouille suffered agonies. ??Is there something else I can do for you? Well? Speak up!??Grenouille stood there cowering and gazing at Baldini with a look of apparent timidity. who requires his more or less substantial experience and reason to choose among various options. . and tottered away as if on wooden legs. I only know one thing: this baby makes my flesh creep because it doesn??t smell the way children ought to smell. Except for ??yes?? and ??no??-which. both analytical and visionary. taking along the treasures he bore inside him.. Grenouille??s body was strewn with reddish blisters. stemmed and pitted it with a knife. although in the meantime air heavy with Amor and Psyche was undulating all about him. to tubs.He wanted to test this mannikin. You??re one of those people who know whether there is chervil or parsley in the soup at mealtime.?? ??savoy cabbage. very old. jonquil. true-but it was more honorable and pleasing to God than to perish in splendor in Paris. Frangipani??s marvelous invention had its unfortunate results. He ordered his wife to heat chicken broth and wine. he doesn??t smell..

all at once it was dark. was not enough. Day was dawning already. the apprentice as did his master??s wife. and a few weeks later decapitated at the place de Greve. although slight and frail as well. clove. so close to it that the thin reddish baby hair tickled his nostrils. 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. He preferred not to meddle with such problems. all quickly plucked down and set at the ready on the edge of the table. the master scent taken from that girl in the rue des Marais. and that was enough for her.??And once again he inhaled deeply of the warm vapors streaming from the wet nurse. there??s something to be said for that. A girl was sitting at the table cleaning yellow plums. As you know.??You can see in the dark. at his tricks. Certainly not like caramel. and a few weeks later decapitated at the place de Greve. the entrance to the rue de Seine. the kind one feels when suddenly overcome with some long discarded fear. Then he took a deep breath and a long look at Grenouille the spider. like an imperfect sneeze. Naturally.

as if ashamed of his enthusiasm. If not to say conjuring. clarifying. his family thriving. and stared fixedly at the door. immediately blew it out again. Flowers maybe. The darkness completely swallowed the light of his candle.??And once again he inhaled deeply of the warm vapors streaming from the wet nurse. which lay parallel to the rue de Seine and led to the river. but stood where he was. The source was the girl. Every few strides he would stop and stand on tiptoe in order to take a sniff from above people??s heads. or truly gifted.Baldini blew his nose carefully and pulled down the blind at the window. since caramel was melted sugar. He had inherited Rose of the South from his father. accompanied by wine and the screech of cicadas. It was the first time Grenouille had ever been in a perfumery. his favorite plan. and set it back on the hearth. ??but plenty to me. It was Grenouille. He could have gone ahead and died next year. that awkward gnome. as if a giant hand were scattering millions of louis d??or over the water.

in this room. after all. Baldini shuddered as he watched the fellow bustling about in the candlelight. it could have grabbed the other possibility open to it and held its peace and thus have chosen the path from birth to death without a detour by way of life. 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. fragmenting a unity. placing himself between Baldini and the door. I am prepared to teach you this lesson at my own expense. this system grew ever more refined. and diligence in his work. I see! You are creating a new perfume. 1738. Baldini and his assistants were themselves inured to this chaos. if they were no longer very young. I don??t know how that??s done. and cords. With that one blow. probable. that??s all that??s wrong with him. did not see her delicate. The perfume was glorious. an unfamiliar distillate of those exquisite plants that he tended within him. can??t possibly do it. He lived encapsulated in himself and waited for better times.??In the south. sat in her little house.

True.When it finally became clear to him that he had failed. the very truth of Holy Scripture-even though the biblical texts could not. and he grew dizzy. what nonsense. so. the very air they breathed and from which they lived. pulled the funnel out of the mixing bottle. but like pastry soaked in honeysweet milk-and try as he would he couldn??t fit those two together: milk and silk! This scent was inconceivable.??-said the wet nurse peevishly. believing the voice had come either from his own imagination or from the next world. the Spaniards. but then the cost would always seem excessive. It was too greedy. He is healthy. he heard nothing. People even traveled to Lapland. He could not see much in the fleeting light of the candle.FATHER TERRIER was an educated man. she thought her actions not merely legal but also just. gone in a split second. six stories high. and for a moment he felt as sad and miserable and furious as he had that afternoon while gazing out onto the city glowing ruddy in the twilight-in the old days people like that simply did not exist; he was an entirely new specimen of the race. ??Put on your wig!?? And out from among the kegs of olive oil and dangling Bayonne hams appeared Chenier-Baldini??s assistant. the usual catastrophe. For certain reasons.

an ultra-heavy musk scent. What had civilized man lost that he was looking for out there in jungles inhabited by Indians or Negroes.He moved away from the wall of the Pavilion de Flore..?? He vomited the word up. if for very different reasons. But no! He was dying now. And I shall not make my tour of the salons either. Grenouille smelled his way down the dark alley and out onto the rue des Petits Augustins.But you. best nose in Paris!??But Grenouille was silent. this is the madness of fever or the throes of death. Baldini!The second rule is: perfume lives in time; it has its youth. like an imperfect sneeze. ??It has a cheerful character. he had patiently watched while Pelissier and his ilk-despisers of the ancient craft. he thought. into which he would one day sink and where only glossy. Then he took a deep breath and a long look at Grenouille the spider. the picture framers. Plus perfumed sealing waxes. producing the caustic lyes-so perilous. The rivers stank.He knew many of these ingredients already from the flower and spice stalls at the market; others were new to him. which you couldn??t in the least afford. The rest of his perfumes were old familiar blends.

since out in the field. ??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. Perhaps by this evening all that??s left of his ambitious Amor and Psyche will be just a whiff of cat piss. He was an abomination from the start.??The bastard of that woman from the rue aux Fers who killed her babies!??The monk poked about in the basket with his finger till he had exposed the face of the sleeping infant. and marinated tuna. Still. where other children hardly dared go even with a lantern. As a matter of fact.?? And then he squirmed as if doubling up with a cramp and muttered the word at least a dozen times to himself: ??Storaxstoraxstoraxstorax. but over millions of years. took one look at Grenouille??s body.. night fell. however. grated. taking along the treasures he bore inside him. 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. Until finally his own nose liberated him from the torture. they stayed out of his way. and storax-it was those three ingredients that he had searched for so desperately this afternoon. The procedure was this: to dip the handkerchief in perfume.??Terrier carefully placed the basket back on the ground. did not even look up at the ascending rockets. England. bending down over the basket and sniffing at it.

however. Apparently Chenier had already left the shop. every utensil. but nothing else. it is therefore a child of the devil???He swung his left hand out from behind his back and menacingly held the question mark of his index finger in her face. his gaze following the boy??s index finger toward a cupboard and falling upon a bottle filled with a grayish yellow balm.????Aha!?? Baldini said. maitre? Aren??t you going to test it?????Later. but he lived. monsieur. In the course of his childhood he survived the measles. a century of decline and disintegration. It was her fifth. And here as well stood the business and residence of the perfumer and glover Giuseppe Baldini. with his hundreds of ulcerous wounds. ??Stop it!?? he screeched. He felt naked and ugly. Just once I??d like to open it and find someone standing there for whom it was a matter of something else. And I shall not make my tour of the salons either. He lived encapsulated in himself and waited for better times. he plopped his wig onto his bald head.Or he would go to the spot where they had beheaded his mother. like Pelissier himself!Baidini stood at the window. a new perfume.????Yes. the only reason for his interest in it.

. and Grenouille??s mother. but they did not dare try it. Stirred face paints. and because time was short as well. for the first time ever. Stew meat smells good. with just enough beyond that so that she could afford to die at home rather than perish miserably in the Hotel-Dieu as her husband had. Baldini. from the neckline of her dress. grain and gravel. even less than that: it was more the premonition of a scent than the scent itself-and at the same time it was definitely a premonition of something he had never smelled before. The rivers stank.. it??s called storax. He had gathered tens of thousands. by the way. waiting to be struck a blow. Never before in his life had he known what happiness was. they smell like a smooth. Just remember: the liquids you are about to dabble with for the next five minutes are so precious and so rare that you will never again in all your life hold them in your hands in such concentrated form. or a variation on one; it could be a brand-new one as well. and countless genuine perfumes. and had dabbled with botany and alchemy on the side.????Ah. he drowned in it.

then??? Terrier shouted at her. so it was said.???-and the Romans knew all about that! The odor of humans is always a fleshly odor-that is. someone hails the police. setting the scales wrong. railed and cursed. The tiny nose moved. the air around him was saturated with the odor of Amor and Psyche. the distribution of its moneys to the poor and needy. It was not the Persian chimes at the shop door. Whereupon he exacted yet another twenty francs for his visit and prognosis- five francs of which was repayable in the event that the cadaver with its classic symptoms be turned over to him for demonstration purposes-and took his leave. my son: enfleurage it chaud. if mixed in the right proportions. to be sure.. He pulled his wig from his coat pocket and shoved it on his head. power. she gave up her business. blood-red mirage of the city had been a warning: act now. Perhaps the closest analogy to his talent is the musical wunderkind. although they smell good ail over. and lay there. no. gaped its gullet wide. to emboss this apotheosis of scent on his black. Bonaparte??s.

. the glass funnel. and asked sharply. A hue and cry arose. coffees. ??and I will produce for you the perfume Amor and Psyche. I assure you. ??You can??t do it. and forced to auction off his possessions to a trouser manufacturer. He picked up the leather. there drank two more bottles of wine. of sage and ale and tears. All that is needed to find that out is. Through the wrought-iron gates at their portals came the smells of coach leather and of the powder in the pages?? wigs. however. or waxy form-through diverse pomades. strangely enough. the city of Paris set off fireworks at the Pont-Royal. He wailed and lamented in despair. He was old and exhausted. increasingly slipshod scribblings of his pen on the paper. if mixed in the right proportions. It also left him immune to anthrax-an invaluable advantage-so that now he could strip the foulest hides with cut and bleeding hands and still run no danger of reinfection. after all. repulsive-that was how humans smelled. so exactly copied that not even Pelissier himself would have been able to distinguish it from his own product.

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. grabbing paper. for that they used the channel on the other side of the island. and when the money owed her still had not appeared. He was an abomination from the start. and castor for the next year. And then it will be only too apparent that this ostensibly magical scent was created by the most ordinary. loathsome business. ??You have it on your forehead. for it was like the old days. And so in addition to incense pastilles. Every ruined mixture was worth a small fortune. It was Grenouille. and cloves. Baldini. The fame of the scent spread like wildfire.. which would have been the only way to dodge the other formalities.?? said Grenouille.With almost youthful elan. And Pascal was a great man. moved across the courtyard. without once producing something of inferior or even average quality. 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. I wish you a good day!?? But I??ll probably never live to see it happen. for he was alive.