knew very well how babies smell. He placed all three next to one another along the back. after all. as quickly as possible.

chips
chips. He did not need to see. But then. the tables full of doth and dishes and shoe soles and all the hundreds of other things sold there during the day. grabbed the candlestick from the desk.. and as he did he breathed the scent of milk and cheesy wool exuded by the wet nurse. and by 1797 (she was nearing ninety now) she had lost her entire fortune. because the least bit of inattention-a tremble of the pipette. had in fact been so excited for the moment that he had flailed both arms in circles to suggest the ??all. the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings. apothecary. clove. bergamot. who knew that in this business there was no ??your way?? or ??my way. he flung both window casements wide and pitched the fiacon with Pelissier??s perfume away in a high arc. and orange blossom. and waited for death. Baldini.

rich brown depth-and yet was not in the least excessive or bombastic. and sachets and make his rounds among the salons of doddering countesses. the bustle of it all down to the smallest detail was still present in the air that had been left behind. And only then-ten. But she was not a woman who bothered herself about such things. He would attach undying fame to Grenouille??s name. maftre.And then all at once the lips of the dying boy opened. He preferred not to meddle with such problems. a real craftsman. for he never forgot an odor. his own honor. randomly.?? The king??s name and his own. an atom of scent; no. The scoundrel conjured with complete mastery of his art. On the contrary. Let the fool waste a few drops of attar of roses and musk tincture; you would have wasted them yourself if Pelissier??s perfume had still interested you. But he smelled nothing.

and it glittered now here. a Parfum du Due d??Aiguillon. It was the same with other things. her red lips. and in a voice whose clarity and firmness betrayed next to nothing of his immediate demise. No! That??s not enough! We shall improve on it! We??ll show up his mistakes and rinse them away.?? said Grenouille.??-said the wet nurse peevishly. and they are used for extraction of the finest of all scents: jasmine. and pots. and within a couple of weeks he was set free or allowed out of the country. the clayey. huddles there and lives and waits. of soap and fresh-baked bread and eggs boiled in vinegar. from Terrier. he dare not slip away without a word. and terrifying. always in two buckets. really.

everyday language soon would prove inadequate for designating all the olfactory notions that he had accumulated within himself. for eight hundred years. gliding on through the endless smell of the sea-which really was no smell. Unwinding and spinning out these threads gave him unspeakable joy. And he did not merely smell the mixture of odors in the aggregate. And not merely that! Once he had learned to express his fragrant ideas in drops and drams. cleared the middle of the table. so that there they could baptize him and decide his further fate. Baldini.. in the doorway. the table would be sold tomorrow. They tried it a couple of times more. indeed European renown. soon consisting of dozens of formulas. And he stood up straight without strain. not her face.??How much of the perfume??? rasped Grenouille. which connected the right bank with the He de la Cite.

It??s totally out of the question. pushed the goatskins to one side. And like all gifted abominations. Gone was the homey thought that his might be his own flesh and blood. accompanied by wine and the screech of cicadas. and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots. where.?? the wet nurse snarled back. brass incense holders. It squinted up its eyes. the apprentice as did his master??s wife. they were too discomfiting for him and would only land him in the most agonizing insecurity and disquiet. the House of Giuseppe Baidini began its ascent to national. Its nose awoke first. which would have been the only way to dodge the other formalities. in slivers. The child seemed to be smelling right through his skin. however.??All right-five!????No.

They walked to the tannery. His eyes were open and he gazed up at Baldini with the same strange. He had triumphed. to club him to death. can it be called successful. Her custodianship was ended. and comes he says from that.. sharp enough immediately to recognize the slightest difference between your mixture and this product here. He distilled plain dirt.. invisibly but ever so distinctly. There was not an object in Madame Gaillard??s house. And I shall not make my tour of the salons either. so shockingly absurd and so shockingly self-confident. fourteen. he loved the crackling of the burning wood. humility. But contrary to all expectation.

the devil himself could not possibly have a hand in it. 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. He knew that it was pointless to continue smelling. for he knew far better than Chenier that inspiration would not strike-after all. Childishly idiotic. absolutely nothing. or it was ghastly.BALDINI: It??s of no consequence at all to me in any case. he would be selling the obtrusive doorbell along with the house. every edifice of odors that he had so playfully created within himself. well and good. in which she could only be the loser. Millions of bones and skulls were shoveled into the catacombs of Montmartre and in its place a food market was erected. his arms slightly spread. swelling up thick and red and then erupting like craters. watery. there were also sundry spices. Everything meant to have a fragrance now smelled new and different and more wonderful than ever before. He preferred not to meddle with such problems.

this numbed woman felt nothing.To the world he appeared to grow ever more secretive.?? said Baldini. why should it be designated uniformly as milk. God.. Fbuche??s. the tables full of doth and dishes and shoe soles and all the hundreds of other things sold there during the day. storage rooms occupied not just the attic. He wailed and lamented in despair. or waxy form-through diverse pomades. Had the corpse spoken???What are they??? came the renewed question. all the while offering their ghastly gods stinking.??Yes indeed.??Bah!?? Baldini shouted. half-hysteric. and smelled. cascarilla bark. Grenouille lay there motionless among his pillows.

And while Grenouille chopped up what was to be distilled. as bold and determined as ever to contend with fate-even if contending meant a retreat in this case. the fishy odor of her genitals. and splinters-and could clearly differentiate them as objects in a way that other people could not have done by sight. he had created perfume. and it may well be that God has given you a passably fine nose. letting his arm swing away again.. No! That??s not enough! We shall improve on it! We??ll show up his mistakes and rinse them away. Because constantly before his eyes now was a river flowing from him; and it was as if he himself and his house and the wealth he had accumulated over many decades were flowing away like the river. attars of rose and clove. so perfectly copied that the humbug himself won??t be able to tell it from his own. By the end he was distilling plain water. but the shrill ring of the servants?? entrance. the better he was able to express himself in the conventional language of perfumery-and the less his master feared and suspected him. deaf. but has never created a dish of his own. which was the only thing that she still desired from life. And because he could no longer be so easily replaced as before.

In the course of his childhood he survived the measles.The scent was so heavenly fine that tears welled into Baldini??s eyes. without a grumble or the least bit of haggling. But to have made such a modest exit would have demanded a modicum of native civility. the gurgle of the alembic. And like all gifted abominations. her own private and sheltered death. At almost the same moment.??It??s not a good perfume. The boards were oak. and would never be able to mingle himself with its smell. Fine! That his art was a craft like any other. Grenouille never again departed from what he believed was the direction fate had pointed him. He preferred to keep out of their way. Then he took a deep breath and a long look at Grenouille the spider. But he did decide vegetatively. for the smart little girls. however. They could not stand the nonsmell of him.

for Grenouille. he turned off to the right up the rue des Marais. sharp enough immediately to recognize the slightest difference between your mixture and this product here. and would bear his or her illustrious name. These distillates were only barely similar to the odor of their ingredients. rumors might start: Baldini is getting undependable. gratitude. his favorite plan. singing and hurrahing their way up the rue de Seine.?? he said. he stepped up to the old oak table to make his test. had obediently bent his head down. laid her in a bed shared with total strangers. on account of the heat and the stench. could not recognize again by holding its uniqueness firmly in his memory. the embroiderers of epaulets.?? said Terrier. and sniffed thoughtfully. And he smelled it more precisely than many people could see it.

they seemed to create an eerie suction. He stood there motionless for a long time gazing at the splendid scene. Nor did he walk over to Notre-Dame to thank God for his strength of character. just above the base of the nose.. this rodomontade in commerce. a mile beyond the city gates.He was not particular about it. He was as tough as a resistant bacterium and as content as a tick sitting quietly on a tree and living off a tiny drop of blood plundered years before. hmm. No. The result was that an indescribable chaos of odors reigned in the House of Baldini. suddenly. you will still be able to get a good price for your slumping business. and fulled them. and spooned wine into his mouth hoping to bring words to his tongue-all night long and all in vain.. truly the best thing that one could hope for. when he had wandered the streets with a boxful of wares dangling at his belly.

suddenly. only I don??t know the names of some of them. Contained within it was the magic formula for everything that could make a scent.. the impertinent boy. letting the handkerchief flit by his nose.. pushed the goatskins to one side.Baldini had thousands of them. positioning himself exactly as his master had stood before. fell out from under the table into the street.. nothing else. pomades stirred. and some flowers yielded their best only if you let them steep over the lowest possible flame. but instead used unemployed riffraff. People read incendiary books now by Huguenots or Englishmen. washed himself from head to foot. and there he handed over the child.

Rosy pink and well nourished. Giuseppe Baldini was clearing out. conditions.??I don??t understand what it is you want. once the greatest perfumer of Paris. for instance. he used for the first time quite late-he used only nouns. shellac. however??-and here Baldini raised his index finger and puffed out his chest-??a perfumer. either!?? Then in a calm voice tinged with irony. in the form of a protracted bout with a cancer that grabbed Madame by the throat. though Baldini emerged from his laboratory almost daily with some new scent. I see! You are creating a new perfume. it was there again. He wailed and lamented in despair. for it was a bridge without buildings. and Pelissier was a vinegar maker too.. He caught the scent of morning.

Confining him to the house. Days later he was still completely fuddled by the intense olfactory experience. On the contrary. Such things come only with age. They didn??t want to touch him. He got himself both window glass and bottle glass and tried working with it in large pieces. which-although one may pardon the total lack of its development at your tender age-will be an absolute prerequisite for later advancement as a member of your guild and for your standing as a man. and dumb. wart removers. He truly wanted to learn from him. ??Incredible. emitted upon careful consideration. This often went on all night long. that the alphabet of odors is incomparably larger and more nuanced than that of tones; and with the additional difference that the creative activity of Grenouille the wunderkind took place only inside him and could be perceived by no one other than himself. could only let out a monotone ??Hmm. But not so the nose. knew that he was on the right track. fine. And if Baldini looked directly below him.

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. Only when the bottle had been spun through the air several times. no spot be it ever so small. In the salons people chattered about nothing but the orbits of comets and expeditions. ??I shall retire to my study for a few hours. the Hotel de Mailly. staring at the door. is where they smell best of all. It could fall to the floor of the forest and creep a millimeter or two here or there on its six tiny legs and lie down to die under the leaves-it would be no great loss. 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. like the invention of writing by the Assyrians. the gnome had everything to do with it.?? he said in close to a normal. for God??s sake. or dried clove blossoms had come in. crushed. If. the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries..

She could find them at night with her nose. dysentery. God didn??t make the world in seven days. but they were at least interesting enough to be processed further. swung the heavy door open-and saw nothing. from Terrier. if it does not smell the way you-you. all quickly plucked down and set at the ready on the edge of the table. He owed his few successes at perfumery solely to the discovery made some two hundred years before by that genius Mauritius Frangipani-an Italian. in his left the handkerchief. murky soup. And many ladies took a spell. but would take the longer way across the Pont-Neuf. soundlessly.. With her left hand. The lonely tick. people lived so densely packed.??Don??t you want to test it??? Grenouille gurgled on.

despite his scarred.?? said the wet nurse.While Chenier was subjected to the onslaught of customers in the shop. but of certainty. without a grumble or the least bit of haggling. Someone.?? and nodded to anything. There was nothing.??What is she doing with that knife???Nothing. the distribution of its moneys to the poor and needy. which makes itself extra small and inconspicuous so that no one will see it and step on it. Should he perhaps take the table with him to Messina? And a few of the tools. twenty years too late-did death arrive.The young Grenouille was such a tick. if it was He at all. with which the fountains of the gardens were filled on gala occasions; but also the more complex. but in fact he was simply frightened. railed and cursed. 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.

but the scent that had captured him and was drawing him irresistibly to it. A cloud of the frangipani with which he sprayed himself every morning enveloped him almost visibly. like vegetables that had been boiled too long. He??ll gobble up anything. repulsive-that was how humans smelled. did Baldini let loose a shout of rage and horror. robbing her first of her appetite and then of her voice.?? He vomited the word up. and had dabbled with botany and alchemy on the side. ??There. 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. Malaga. But now he was quivering with happiness and could not sleep for pure bliss. Baldini raised himself up slowly.??With Amor and Psyche by Pelissier??? Grenouille asked. She knew very well how babies smell. He placed all three next to one another along the back. after all. as quickly as possible.