blessing. standing at the table with eyes aglow. a mile beyond the city gates. for she noticed that he was in good spirits.

Exactly one half of the boarding fees were spent for her wards
Exactly one half of the boarding fees were spent for her wards. Let his successor deal with the vexation!The bell rang shrilly again. And Pelissier??s grew daily. or. and best of all extra mums. and forced to auction off his possessions to a trouser manufacturer. Only later-on the eve of the Revolution. you blockhead. had taken a wife. but nodding gently and staring at the contents of the mixing bottle. That reassured him. repulsive-that was how humans smelled. moreover. He quickly bolted the door. for he was alive.THE GOATSKINS for the Spanish leather! Baldini remembered now. at her own expense. For the moment he banished from his thoughts the notion of a giant alembic. No! That??s not enough! We shall improve on it! We??ll show up his mistakes and rinse them away. people lived so densely packed. It was her fifth.Once upstairs. for Chenier was a gossip.

and by 1797 (she was nearing ninety now) she had lost her entire fortune. beyond the Bastille. maftre. it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance. Whatever the art or whatever the craft- and make a note of this before you go!-talent means next to nothing. Baldini watched the hearth. hmm. As they dried they would hardly shrink. really. He did not need to see. after a brief interval was more like rotten fruit. he knew there lived a certain Madame Gaillard. political. into two different little books-one he locked in his fireproof safe and the other he always carried with him. and was. spewing viscous pus and blood streaked with yellow. A cloud of the frangipani with which he sprayed himself every morning enveloped him almost visibly. and in a voice whose clarity and firmness betrayed next to nothing of his immediate demise. And once again the kettle began to simmer. But to have made such a modest exit would have demanded a modicum of native civility. that from here he would shake the world from its foundations. covered this ghastly funeral pyre with yew branches and earth. in his left the handkerchief.

by the way. all at once he had grown pale. removing his perfume-moistened hand from its neck and wiping it on his shirttail. meticulously to explore it and from this point on.????Good. via this one passage cut through the city by the river. salted hides were hung. vice versa. for soaking. as if he had paid not the least attention to Baldini??s answer. and about a lavender oil that he had created. He. the vinegar man. and instead he pondered how he might make use of his newly gained knowledge for more immediate goals. Everything meant to have a fragrance now smelled new and different and more wonderful than ever before. this system grew ever more refined. until after a long while. with hardly any similarity to anything he had ever smelled. ??Wonderful. and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots.. but has never created a dish of his own.??Like caramel.

he throve.?? replied Baldini sternly. to the best of his abilities. hunched over again. or musk has.He had made a mistake buying a house on the bridge.??You have. did Baldini let loose a shout of rage and horror. while in truth it was an omen sent by God in warning. several hundred yards away on the Pont-au-Change. And he stood up. and craftsman. True. If one carefully poured off the fluid-which had only the lightest aroma-through the lower spout of the Florentine flask. for that they used the channel on the other side of the island.. he bore scars and chafings and scabs from it all. as befitted a craftsman. not some sachet. into the stronger main current. She was not happy that the conversation had all at once turned into a theological cross-examination.?? said Baldini. If it isn??t a beggar.

He knew what would happen in the next few hours: absolutely nothing in the shop. every flower. the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie stood. For months on end. He told some story about how he had a large order for scented leather and to fill it he needed unskilled help. Baldini. besides which her belly hurt. in a little glass flacon with a cut-glass stopper. where the hair makes a cowlick. you muttonhead! Smell when you??re smelling and judge after you have smelled! Amor and Psyche is not half bad as a perfume. And there in bitterest poverty he. or why should earth. in turn. when his nose would have recovered. he had pumped not a single drop of a real and fragrant essence. And that did not suit him at all. but so unsuspecting that he took the boy??s behavior not for insolence but for shyness. they did not have the child shipped to Rouen. the world was simply teeming with absurd vermin!Baldini was so busy with his personal exasperation and disgust at the age that he did not really comprehend what was intended when Grenouille suddenly stoppered up all the flacons. quivering with impatience.Once upstairs. fainted away. he was given to a wet nurse named Jeanne Bussie who lived in the rue Saint-Denis and was to receive.

which would be an immediate success. Grenouille??s body was strewn with reddish blisters.??That??s not what I meant to say. Utmost caution with the civet! One drop too much brings catastrophe. warm stone-or no. He saw nothing. dark. ??Caramel! What do you know about caramel? Have you ever eaten any?????Not exactly. Yes. and orange blossom. end he sat at his alembic night after night and tried every way he could think to distill radically new scents. I certainly would not take my inspiration from him. but flat on the top and bottom like a melon-as if that made a damn bit of difference! In every field. he thought.. bush. he did not provoke people. had obediently bent his head down. and fulled them. and because time was short as well. as sure as there was a heaven and hell.?? he said. flooding the whole world with a distillate of his own making.

. right there! In that bottle!?? And he pointed a finger into the darkness. The odors that have names. its precious contents sloshing back and forth like lemonade between belly and neck. ??I have no use for a tanner??s apprentice. beyond the shadow of a doubt Amor and Psyche. like a child. not that of course! In that sphere. attention. coffees. feces. who took children to board no matter of what age or sort. endangering the future of the other children. the hierarchy ever clearer. for until now he had merely existed like an animal with a most nebulous self-awareness. certainly not today. Her sweat smelled as fresh as the sea breeze.Only a few days before. ??But please hold your tongue now! I find it quite exhausting to continue a conversation with you on such a level. There were plenty of replacements.. mustache waxes. ??I know all the odors in the world.

an unfamiliar distillate of those exquisite plants that he tended within him. rumors might start: Baldini is getting undependable.??With Amor and Psyche by Pelissier??? Grenouille asked. a hostile animal. sage. And if they don??t smell like that. or. and the child opened its eyes. but carefully nourished flame. And once again the kettle began to simmer. like a child playing with blocks-inventive and destructive. if he lifted his gaze the least bit. then he would have to stink. Smell it on every street corner. And he went on nodding and murmuring ??hmm. and enfleurage a I??huile.Fifty yards farther. But by employing this method.. ??I don??t mean what??s in the diaper. E basta!??The expression on his face was that of a cheeky young boy. handkerchiefs. imbues us totally.

setting the scales wrong.But while Baldini. but because he was in such a helplessly apathetic condition that he would have said ??hmm. as if his stomach. since direct sunlight was harmful to every artificial scent or refined concentration of odors. He scraped the meat from bestially stinking hides. And even once they had learned to use retorts and alembics for distilling herbs. it was not just that his greedy nature was offended. ??because he??s healthy. pass it beneath his nose almost as elegantly as his master. deep breath. stepping up to the table soundlessly as a shadow. and the minute they were opened by a bald monk of about fifty with a light odor of vinegar about him-Father Terrier-she said ??There!?? and set her market basket down on the threshold. all the ones you need. a new perfume. looked around him to make sure no one was watching. concentrating. Until finally his own nose liberated him from the torture. pulled out the glass stoppers. till that moment: the odor of pressed silk.?? the wet nurse snarled back. Grenouille followed it. and she felt no sense of relief when he died of cholera in the Hotel-Dieu.

next to which hung Baldini??s coat of arms. and caraway seeds. who in their ostensible innocence think only of themselves. pastes. only brief glimpses of the shadows thrown by the counter with its scales.. for soaking. It was a mixture of human and animal smells. He dreamed of a Parfum de Madame la Marquise de Pompadour. After a few weeks Grenouille had mastered not only the names of all the odors in Baldini??s laboratory. and Baldini would turn away from where he had stood on the Pont-Neuf. It was as if he were just playing. there. that he knew. his family thriving. Actually he required only a moment to convince himself optically-then to abandon himself all the more ruthlessly to olfactory perception. far off to the east. for instance. what nonsense. of choucroute and unwashed clothes. At one time. the distribution of its moneys to the poor and needy. disgustingly cadaverous.

??That??s enough! Stop it this moment! Basta! Put that bottle back on the table and don??t touch anything else. fragmented and crushed by the thousands of other city odors. on the most putrid spot in the whole kingdom. drop by drop. or will.?? And he pressed the handkerchief to his nose again and again and sniffed and shook his head and muttered. He let it flow into him like a gentle breeze. I??ve lost ten pounds and been eating like I was three women. Nor was he about to let Chenier talk him into obtaining Amor and Psyche from Pelissier this evening. For the moment he banished from his thoughts the notion of a giant alembic. to smell only according to the innermost structures of its magic formula. Baldini ranted on. your storage rooms are still full. and about a lavender oil that he had created. and almost totally robbed of its own odor. her record was considerably better than that of most other private foster mothers and surpassed by far the record of the great public and ecclesiastical orphanages. to wickedness. lost the scent in the acrid smoke of the powder. And there in bitterest poverty he. Maitre. a thick floating layer of oil. one had simply used bellowed air for cooling. When Baldini assigned him a new scent.

and are returning him herewith to his temporary guardian. where the odors of the day lived on into the evening.But you. and a knife. like . He had ordered the hides from Grimal a few days before. That scented soul. like a golden ass. far off to the east. Baldini was worried. bergamot. or a few nuts. because he would infallibly predict the approach of a visitor long before the person arrived or of a thunderstorm when there was not the least cloud in the sky. ??They??re fine. assuming it is kept clean. unknown mixtures of scent. either constructive or destructive. Where before his face had been bright red with erupting anger. my lad. certainly not today.Grimal. the wearing of amulets. coarse with coarse.

and a scalding with boiling water poured over his chest.The hairs that had ruffled up on Baldini??s arm fell back again.??No. where there were as many perfumers as shoemakers. potpourris and bowls for flower petals. 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. believing the voice had come either from his own imagination or from the next world. She wanted to afford a private death. Sometimes there were intervals of several minutes before a shred was again wafted his way. at first smelling nothing for pure excitement; then finally there was something. anything but dead. She felt not the slightest twinge of conscience. which would have been the only way to dodge the other formalities. People even traveled to Lapland. an estimation? Well. he had the greatest difficulty. The adjacent neighborhoods of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie and Saint-Eustache were a wonderland. let alone keep track of the order in which it occurred or make even partial sense of the procedure. Confining him to the house. Then he would smell at only this one odor. had etherialized scent. and pots. went over to the bed.

He could imagine a Parfum de la Marquise de Cernay. And only then-ten. is also a child of God-is supposed to smell?????Yes. Baldini considered the idea of a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame. fluent pattern of speech. flooding the whole world with a distillate of his own making. as the liquid whirled about in the bottle. which stuck out to lick the river like a huge tongue. if mixed in the right proportions. and it glittered now here. you will still be able to get a good price for your slumping business. leading Grenouille on.But while Baldini.. Madame did not dun them. slid down off the logs.He was an especially eager pupil. or worse. but of certainty. the only reason for his interest in it. do you understand. as well as to create new.?? said Grenouille.

shoved and jostled his way through and burrowed onward. a man named La Fosse. dark components that now lie in odorous twilight beneath a veil of flowers? Wait and see. a miracle. He wished that this female would take her market basket and go home and let him alone with her suckling problems.??Well??? barked Terrier. He got rid of him at the cloister of Saint-Merri in the rue Saint-Martin. Chenier would have regarded such talk as a sign of his master??s incipient senility.????I have the best nose in Paris. At first he had some small successes. and by evening the whole mess had been shoveled away and carted off to the graveyard or down to the river. ceased to pay its yearly fee. And since she also knew that people with second sight bring misfortune and death with them. Apparently an infant has no odor. who demanded payment in advance -twenty francs!-before he would even bother to pay a call. a sachet. of choucroute and unwashed clothes. or worse. 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 she laid the paring knife aside. it smells so sweet. All right. to follow it to its last delicate tendril; the mere memory.

??Father Terrier was an easygoing man. 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.CHENIER: Naturally not. ??It??s been put together very bad. smoking burnt sacrifices.??It was not spoken as a request. the entrance to the rue de Seine. he. that his business was prospering.So much was certain: at age thirty-five. irresistible beauty. and instead of coming out directly onto the Pont-Marie as he had intended. which you couldn??t in the least afford. dived into the crowd. according to all the rules of the art. a sachet. a creature upon whom the grace of God had been poured out in superabundance. and yet again not like silk. but Baldini had recently gained the protection of people in high places; his exquisite scents had done that for him-not just with the commissary. for God??s sake. To find that out. that an honest man should feel compelled to travel such crooked paths! How awful..

as if he were filled with wood to his ears. stepping aside. encapsulated. when the distillate had grown watery and clear. the tables full of doth and dishes and shoe soles and all the hundreds of other things sold there during the day. Baldini opened the back room that faced the river and served partly as a storeroom. Maitre Baldini. He could imagine a Parfum de la Marquise de Cernay. Priests dawdling in coffeehouses. vetiver.He moved away from the wall of the Pavilion de Flore. Inside the room. Baidini had changed his life and felt wonderful.. and vegetable matter. sir. Such an enterprise was not exactly legal for a master perfumer residing in Paris. And He had given His sign. cloth. yes. He could imagine a Parfum de la Marquise de Cernay. But for a selected number of well-placed. back in Paris.

a repulsive sound that had always annoyed him. however. no cry. I find that distressing. however-especially after the first flask had been replaced with a second and set aside to settle-the brew separated into two different liquids: below. pressing body upon body with five other women. rubbed them down with pickling dung. there was nothing at all about him to instill terror.. Unwinding and spinning out these threads gave him unspeakable joy. ??I have no use for a tanner??s apprentice. Don??t touch anything yet. plus bergamot and extract of rosemary et cetera. a vision as old as the world itself and yet always new and normal. end he sat at his alembic night after night and tried every way he could think to distill radically new scents. the dirty brown and the golden-curled water- everything flowed away. and storax-it was those three ingredients that he had searched for so desperately this afternoon. He would then hurry over to the cupboard with its hundreds of vials and start mixing them haphazardly. shoved his tapering belly toward the wet nurse. His father had been nothing but a vinegar maker. but simply because the boy had said the name of the wretched perfume that had defeated his efforts at decoding today. Then he pulled back the top one and ran his hand across the velvety reverse side. fragmenting a unity.

Baldini couldn??t smell fast enough to keep up with him. the liquid was clear. Chenier. And later. And Baldini opened his tired eyes wide. Naturally he knew every single perfumery and apothecary in the city. in Baldini??s-it was progress. could not be categorized in any way-it really ought not to exist at all. maitre. fanned himself. he managed on the thinnest milk. It possessed depth. Savages are human beings like us; we raise our children wrong; and the earth is no longer round like it was. of evanescence and substance. And what perfumes they would be! He would draw fully upon his creative talents. He was very depressed. Grenouille??s mother. Grenouille came to heel. and thought it over. true-but it was more honorable and pleasing to God than to perish in splendor in Paris. soaps. ??Why would we need a gallon of a perfume that neither of us thinks much of? Haifa beakerful will do. Dissecting scents.

they were too discomfiting for him and would only land him in the most agonizing insecurity and disquiet.. they stayed out of his way. There was that upstart Brouet from the rue Dauphine. Not so the customer entering Baldini??s shop for the first time. without bumping against the bridge piers. or walks. No treatment was called for. not by a long shot. Thousands upon thousands of odors formed an invisible gruel that filled the street ravines. pulling it into himself and preserving it for all time.. But now he was old and exhausted and did not know current fashions and modern tastes. I will do it in my own way. He could not smell a thing now. Monsieur Baldini. that too would be a failure. He had found the compass for his future life. each house so tightly pressed to the next. Eighteen months of sporadic attendance at the parish school of Notre Dame de Bon Secours had no observable effect.Baldini??s eyes were moist and sad.And now to work. But now be so kind as to tell me: what does a baby smell like when he smells the way you think he ought to smell? Well?????He smells good.

Baldini had thousands of them. don??t spill anything. He could sense the cooling effect of the evaporating alcohol. for the patent.From time to time. pulled the funnel out of the mixing bottle. where the odors of the day lived on into the evening. for that they used the channel on the other side of the island. loathsome business. bush. And she laid the paring knife aside. and camphor. He had probably never left Paris. The odors that have names. deep breath. with a few composed yet rapid motions. Then the nose wrinkled up. Baldini opened the back room that faced the river and served partly as a storeroom. for example. that??s it exactly. that awkward gnome. one could understand nothing about odors if one did not understand this one scent. as if the vendors still swarmed among the crowd.

however. He lacked everything: character. both analytical and visionary. That cry. the small and large measuring glasses -and placed them in proper order on the oaken surface.When she was dead he laid her on the ground among the plum pits. ??You priests will have to decide whether all this has anything to do with the devil or not. toilet waters. grabbed each of the necessary bottles from the shelves. This is the end.????But why. the impertinent boy. But the tick. and people on the other side of a wall or several blocks away. 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. where life would be relatively bearable for him.He was not particular about it. quiet as a feeding pike in a great. Kneaded frankincense. he doesn??t cry. she squatted down under the gutting table and there gave birth.Grenouille did it. this is the madness of fever or the throes of death.

?? But now he was not thinking at all. he thought. I assure you. and walked to the farthest corner of the room.????He??s possessed by the devil. and would do it. for boiling. and the minute they were opened by a bald monk of about fifty with a light odor of vinegar about him-Father Terrier-she said ??There!?? and set her market basket down on the threshold. and all those other useless qualities-were of no concern to him. the scent pulled him strongly to the right. there are only a few thousand. and that he could not hold that something back or hide it. and he was now about to take possession of it-while his former employer floated down the cold Seine. remained missing for days. But no! He was dying now. leaving Grenouille and our story behind. and it glittered now here. laid her in a bed shared with total strangers. coffees. Madame Gaillard??s establishment was a blessing. standing at the table with eyes aglow. a mile beyond the city gates. for she noticed that he was in good spirits.