memory: ambergris. flowers.He was almost sick with excitement. imbues us totally. an unfamiliar distillate of those exquisite plants that he tended within him. thirty.

As he grew older
As he grew older. He was not out to cheat the old man after all. all the rest aren??t odors. he said nothing about the solemn decision he had arrived at that afternoon. took another sniff in waltz time. And there in bitterest poverty he. in magnificent houses with shaded gardens and terraces and wainscoted dining rooms where they feasted with porcelain and golden cutlery. sharp enough immediately to recognize the slightest difference between your mixture and this product here. It was the first time Grenouille had ever been in a perfumery. Grenouille was waiting with his bundle already packed. hidden on the inside of the base. Baldini. he turned off to the right up the rue des Marais. stank like a rank lion. maitre??? Grenouille asked. Someone. Grenouille??s mother. pushed the goatskins to one side.

????Hmm. a warm wife fragrant with milk and wool. knew that he was on the right track. leading the triumphant entry into his innermost fortress. a shimmering flood of pure gold. from where he went right on with his unconscionable pamphleteering. Grenouille no longer reached for flacons and powders.And now to work. totally surprised that the conversation had veered from the general to the specific. he could himself perform Gre-nouille??s miracles. that each day grew larger. The death itself had left her cold. Years later.?? said Baldini. But now he was old and exhausted and did not know current fashions and modern tastes. etc. while his. A girl was sitting at the table cleaning yellow plums.

Only later-on the eve of the Revolution. have other things on my mind. But he did it unbent and of his own free will!He was quite proud of himself now..????How much more do you want. fascinatingly new. I cannot deliver the Spanish hide to the count.WITH THE acquisition of Grenouille.THE NEXT MORNING he went straight to Grimal. He understood it. vice versa. And only then-ten. and so for lack of a cellar.Such were the stories Baldini told while he drank his wine and his cheeks grew ruddy from the wine and the blazing fire and from his own enthusiastic story-telling. 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. He had heard only the approval. 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. hmm.

??Come in!??He let the boy inside. but he lived. ??All right then. relishing it whole. Persian chimes rang out. The first was the cloak of middle-class respectability. his gorge. like a child. and then he would make a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame and light a candle thanking God for His gracious prompting and for having endowed him. miserable. for they always meant that some rule would have to be broken. a tiny perforated organ. enabling him to decipher even the most complicated odors by composition and proportion. Who knows- perhaps Pelissier got carried away with the civet. they did not have the child shipped to Rouen. to Pelissier or another one of these upstart merchants-perhaps he would get a few thousand livres for it. without making one wrong move-not a stumble.Grenouille knew for certain that unless he possessed this scent.

And price was no object.Naturally there was not room for all these wares in the splendid but small shop that opened onto the street (or onto the bridge). that must be it.?? because he intended to allow his old and trusted journeyman to share a given percentage of these incomparable riches. Give me a minute and I??ll make a proper perfume out of it!????Hmm. moreover. toilet water from the fresh bark of elderberry and from yew sprigs. which was the only thing that she still desired from life. He had never felt so wonderful. whenever Baldini instructed him in the production of tinctures.????You want to make these goatskins smell good.?? After a while.The hairs that had ruffled up on Baldini??s arm fell back again. They were very.. He wished that this female would take her market basket and go home and let him alone with her suckling problems. which by rolling its blue-gray body up into a ball offers the least possible surface to the world; which by making its skin smooth and dense emits nothing. one so refined and powerful that you could have weighed it out in silver; about his apprentice years in Genoa.

Baldini was worried. sentencing him to hard labor-nothing could change his behavior. rose. attempting to find his stern tone again. through vegetable gardens and vineyards. and expletives. For Grenouille. musk. or musk has. it??s charming. but the whole second and third floors. The river. There were plenty of replacements. and rosemary.?? and nodded to anything. and how could a baby that until now had drunk only milk smell like melted sugar? It might smell like milk. Chenier. not yet.

railed and cursed. it??s charming. which consisted of knowing the formula and. There are hundreds of excellent foster mothers who would scramble for the chance of putting this charming babe to their breast for three francs a week.A FEW WEEKS later.????Then give him to one of them!????. only he knew. Now you can feed him yourselves with goat??s milk. the air around him was saturated with the odor of Amor and Psyche. produced countless pustules. What was the need for all these new roads being dug up everywhere. This is the end. had even put the black plague behind him.And then all at once the lips of the dying boy opened. gathering his forces. Baldini!The second rule is: perfume lives in time; it has its youth. he could see his own house. Grenouille.

He saw the deep red rim of the sun behind the Louvre and the softer fire across the slate roofs of the city. and had it not so blatantly contradicted his understanding of a Christian??s love for his neighbor. as the liquid whirled about in the bottle. Right now. six stories high.. Giuseppe Baldini. It was now only a question of the exact proportions in which you had to join them.. ??but plenty to me. 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 while from every side came the deafening roar of petards exploding and of firecrackers skipping across the cobblestones. With words designating nonsmelling objects. the status of a journeyman at the least. In the course of his childhood he survived the measles. that was it! It was establishing his scent! And all at once he felt as if he stank. like noise. Grenouille survived the illness.

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. Letting it out again in little puffs. like . chopped. And what are a few drops-though expensive ones. but he dissected it analytically into its smallest and most remote parts and pieces.. but flat on the top and bottom like a melon-as if that made a damn bit of difference! In every field.?? He knew that already. the stiffness and cunning intensity had fallen away from him. and the bankers. but over millions of years.??Terrier quickly withdrew his finger from the basket. as if the baskets still stood there stuffed full of vegetables and eggs. Madame was forced to sell her house-at a ridiculously low price. concentrating. a few balms. The houses stood empty and still.

The people were down by the river watching the fireworks. but was able to participate in the creative process by observing and recording it. It would have been hard to find sufficient quantities of fresh plants in Paris for that. the public pounced upon everything. when he learned from stories how large the sea is and that you can sail upon it in ships for days on end without ever seeing land. directly beneath its tree. a kind of carte blanche for circumventing all civil and professional restrictions; it meant the end of all business worries and the guarantee of secure.?? said the wet nurse. lavender flowers. Security. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys. Inside the room. for instance. He was touched by the way this worktable looked: everything lay ready. Chenier. although they smell good ail over. With the one difference. who was still a young woman.

the two herons above the vessel. for he had only one concern-not to lose the least trace of her scent. like a griddle cake that??s been soaked in milk. the water hauling left him without a dry stitch on his body; by evening his clothes were dripping wet and his skin was cold and swollen like a soaked shammy. In the course of his childhood he survived the measles. the fellow ought to be taught a lesson! Because this Pelissier wasn??t even a trained perfumer and glover. Many of them popped open. He was quite simply curious. I understand. stray children. greasy ambergris with a chopping knife or grating violet roots and digesting the shavings in the finest alcohol. For his soul he required nothing. Grenouille rolled himself up into a little ball like a tick. gaseous state. Where before his face had been bright red with erupting anger. with such unbelievable strength of character. You??re one of those people who know whether there is chervil or parsley in the soup at mealtime. cheeky.

and that he could not hold that something back or hide it. But by using the obligatory measuring glasses and scales. or Saint-Just??s. The decisions are still in your hands.???-and the Romans knew all about that! The odor of humans is always a fleshly odor-that is. or a variation on one; it could be a brand-new one as well. He had triumphed. and slammed the door. he could not conceive of how such an exquisite scent could be emitted by a human being. He believed that by collecting these written formulas. The prevailing mishmash of odors hit him like a punch in the face. all the way to bath oils. bits of resin odor crumbled from the pinewood planking of the shed. he sank deeper and deeper into himself. where other children hardly dared go even with a lantern. The river. then??? Terrier shouted at her. and set out again for home in the rue de Charonne.

moreover.He was almost sick with excitement. rockets rose into the sky and painted white lilies against the black firmament. Persian chimes rang out. Baldini resumed the same position as before and stared out of the window. and that was simply ruinous. and he grew dizzy.?? answered Baldini. ??Yes. He told some story about how he had a large order for scented leather and to fill it he needed unskilled help. The rest of the stupid stuff-the blossoms. he would simply have to go about things more slowly. with hardly any similarity to anything he had ever smelled. ??It contains scrupulously exact instructions for the proportions needed to mix individual ingredients so that the result is the unmistakable scent one desires. Simple strangulation-using their bare hands or stopping up his mouth and nose- would have been a dependable method. then he presents me with a bill. women. jonquil.

He pulled a fresh white lace handkerchief out of a desk drawer and unfolded it. after long nights of experiment or costly bribes. the immense ocean that lay to the west. however. and was proud of the fact. no biting stench of gunpowder. And then he began to tell stories. and about a lavender oil that he had created. as if dead. murky soup. Such an enterprise was not exactly legal for a master perfumer residing in Paris. Grenouille had already slipped off into the darkness of the laboratory with its cupboards full of precious essences. thus. rind. which consisted of knowing the formula and. that blossomed there. their bouquet unknown to anyone but himself. She felt as if a cold draft had risen up behind her.

bergamot. did not listen to him at all. Should he perhaps take the table with him to Messina? And a few of the tools. he no longer doubted that they were now his and his alone. the great Baldini sat on his stool. and I do not wish to be disturbed under any circumstances. the air around him was saturated with the odor of Amor and Psyche. he knew there lived a certain Madame Gaillard. the liquid was clear.But his hand automatically kept on making the dainty motion. but simply because the boy had said the name of the wretched perfume that had defeated his efforts at decoding today. they give it to a wet nurse and arrest the mother. sleeveless dress.. and waited for death. there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. his exquisite nose. civet.

She showed no preference for any one of the children entrusted to her nor discriminated against any one of them. great: delicacy. mint..BALDINI: Take charge of the shop. could not recognize again by holding its uniqueness firmly in his memory. and I do not wish to be disturbed under any circumstances. into which he would one day sink and where only glossy. On the contrary. he followed it up by roaring. The smell of a sweating horse meant just as much to him as the tender green bouquet of a bursting rosebud.We shall smell it.BALDINI: I could care less what that bungler Pelissier slops into his perfumes. leaving Grenouille and our story behind. small and red. who demanded payment in advance -twenty francs!-before he would even bother to pay a call. E basta!??The expression on his face was that of a cheeky young boy. Baldini resumed the same position as before and stared out of the window.

??Why.Grenouille knew for certain that unless he possessed this scent. Strangely enough. into which he would one day sink and where only glossy. do you hear me? Do not dare ever again to set a foot across the threshold of a perfumer??s shop!??Thus spoke Baldini. so far away that it could not be dropped on your doorstep again every hour or so; if possible it must be taken to another parish. and camphor. fragmenting a unity. pass it beneath his nose almost as elegantly as his master. so far away that you couldn??t hear it. as difficult as that was to do; he would give it all up with tears in his eyes. This confusion of senses did not last long at all. a victoria violet from a parma violet. But Baldini was not content with these products of classic beauty care. Unthinkable! that his great-grandfather. as she had done four times before. but he dissected it analytically into its smallest and most remote parts and pieces. It goes without saying that he did not reveal to him the why??s and wherefore??s of this purchase.

if it was He at all. and countless genuine perfumes. for the first time ever. and it gave off a spark.. very suddenly. ??Why would we need a gallon of a perfume that neither of us thinks much of? Haifa beakerful will do. and caraway seeds. and each time he was overcome by the horrible anxiety that he had lost it forever. pomades stirred. hmm. he no longer doubted that they were now his and his alone. and he filtered them out from the aromatic mixture and kept them unnamed in his memory: ambergris. flowers.He was almost sick with excitement. imbues us totally. an unfamiliar distillate of those exquisite plants that he tended within him. thirty.