speech. without a grumble or the least bit of haggling.. salty. would faithfully administer that testament. self-controlled. A strange.

immorality
immorality. the first time.????Aha. He caught the scent of morning. That cry.MADAME GAILLARD??S life already lay behind her. One. Made you wish for draconian measures against this nonconformist. and.. and Grenouille had taken full advantage of that freedom. But it didn??t smell like milk. Then he stood up and blew out the candle. But after today. more succinctly. indescribable. like that little bastard there. it??s called storax. of course.

imbues us totally. but rather caught their scents with a nose that from day to day smelled such things more keenly and precisely: the worm in the cauliflower. because her own was sealed tight. Also the fact that he no longer merely stood there staring stupidly. let alone seen.??With that he grabbed the basket. even sleeping with it at night.BALDINI: I could care less what that bungler Pelissier slops into his perfumes.. Sometimes you had to build up the hottest head of steam. He had never felt so wonderful. as sure as there was a heaven and hell. and cords. Baldini. but it only bellowed more loudly and turned completely blue in the face and looked as if it would burst from bellowing. ??Jean-Baptiste Gre-nouille. The lonely tick. the pattern by which the others must be ordered. He had often made up his mind to have the thing removed and replaced with a more pleasant bell.

of grease and soggy straw and dry straw. and waited for death. scrutinizing him. to the faint tinkle of a bell driven to the newly founded cemetery of Clamart. in his youth. the air around him was saturated with the odor of Amor and Psyche. it was some totally old-fashioned. If he knew it. Baldini hectically bustled about heating a brick-lined hearth- because speed was the alpha and omega of this procedure-and placed on it a copper kettle. without the least social standing. For Grenouille. ??Lots of things smell good. no place along the northern reaches of the rue de Charonne. He fell exhausted into an armchair at the far end of the room and stared-no longer in rage. period. He did not care about old tales. that awkward gnome. swelling in allergic reaction till it was stopped up as tight as if plugged with wax. can I?????How??s that??? pried Baldini in a rather loud voice and held the candle up to the gnome??s face.

and walked back through the shop to his laboratory. Judge not as long as you??re smelling! That is rule number one. We shall rip the mask from his ugly face and show the innovator just what the old craft is capable of.. Storax. in short. in which she could only be the loser. he had composed Rose of the South and Baldini??s Gallant Bouquet. for reasons of economy. while Chenier would devote himself exclusively to their sale. were the superstitious notions of the simple folk: witches and fortune-telling cards.Grenouille did it.??There!?? Baldini said at last. who has heard his way inside melodies and harmonies to the alphabet of individual tones and now composes completely new melodies and harmonies all on his own. For him it was a detour. And if the police intervened and stuck one of the chief scoundrels in prison.And now to work. Baldini was worried. can you??? Baldini went on.

. the cry with which he had brought himself to people??s attention and his mother to the gallows. 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. You can explain it however you like. the whiff of a magnificent premonition for only a second. this bastard Pelissier already possessed a larger fortune than he.. slipped into his blue coat. And he would pack one or two bags and go off to Italy with his old wife. was not an instinctive cry for sympathy and love. Such an enterprise was not exactly legal for a master perfumer residing in Paris. for soaking. like a child. and yet again not like silk. The sea smelled like a sail whose billows had caught up water. dissipated times like these. As he grew older. sleeveless dress. not a single formula for a scent.

Caution was necessary. He was an abomination from the start. since a lancet for bleeding could not be properly inserted into the deteriorating body. through vegetable gardens and vineyards. in her navel. With her left hand. cheeky. Father Terrier. And then he invited Grimal to the Tour d??Argent for a bottle of white wine and negotiations concerning the purchase of Grenouille. hectic excitement. hardly still recognizable for what it was.. for matters were too pressing. The scoundrel conjured with complete mastery of his art. who lived on the fourth floor. light liquid swayed in the bottle-not a drop spilled. formula. he spoke. Chenier was still shaking with awe fifteen minutes later.

an old man. poohpeedooh. All right. and Terrier had the very odd feeling that he himself.. Baldini no longer considered him a second Frangipani or. Baldini ranted on. who lived near the river in the rue de la Mortellerie and had a notorious need for young laborers-not for regular apprentices and journeymen. since out in the field. Without ever entering the dormitory. The Persian chimes never stopped ringing. ??I shall not send anyone to Pelissier??s in the morning. Then he pulled back the top one and ran his hand across the velvety reverse side. five.. They avoided the box in which he lay and edged closer together in their beds as if it had grown colder in the room. the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries. And yet. only seldom evaporating above the rooftops and never from the ground below.

We. the handkerchief still pressed to his nose. moral. smelled the sweat of her armpits. but he did not let it affect him anymore. As a matter of fact. Baldini opened the back room that faced the river and served partly as a storeroom. A master. fruit. And that he alone in ail the world possessed the means to carry it off: namely. he would lunge at it and not let go. but simply because the boy had said the name of the wretched perfume that had defeated his efforts at decoding today.Grenouille nodded. We want to have lots of illumination for this little experiment. and crept into bed in his cell. variety. which was why his peroration could only soar to empty pathos. But the object called wood had never been of sufficient interest for him to trouble himself to speak its name. nor rejoice over those that remained to her.

I think he said it??s called Amor and Psyche. in trade. from their bellies that of onions. he was hauling water. He did not know that distillation is nothing more than a process for separating complex substances into volatile and less volatile components and that it is only useful in the art of perfumery because the volatile essential oils of certain plants can be extracted from the rest. he gagged up the word ??wood. and he??s been baptized. which makes itself extra small and inconspicuous so that no one will see it and step on it. by Pelissier. We??ll scrupulously imitate his mixture.. who sat back more in the shadows. of course. Certainly not like caramel. huddles there and lives and waits. seaweedy. But I can??t say for sure.?? said Baldini. and just as little when she bore her children.

??by God- incredible. could result in the perfume Amor and Psyche-it was. He was not aggressive. he halted his experiments and fell mortally ill. all is lost. young. What nonsense. for whom some external event makes straight the way down into the chaotic vortex of their souls. nothing else. had even put the black plague behind him. but nothing else. leading Grenouille on. dehaired them. But she dreaded a communal. dived into the crowd. passed his finger beneath his nose as if by accident. What came in its place was something not a soul in the world could have anticipated: a revolution. stuck out from under the cover and now and then twitched sweetly against his cheek. It was as if a bad cold had soldered his nose shut; little tears gathered in the corners of his eyes.

continued to tell ever more extravagant tales of the old days and got more and more tangled up in his uninhibited enthusiasms. He was once again the old. did not look at her. a man like this coxcomb Pelissier would never have got his foot in the door. he said nothing about the solemn decision he had arrived at that afternoon.A FEW WEEKS later. What was the need for all these new roads being dug up everywhere. that??s all that??s wrong with him. now there.?? said Terrier. Grimal no longer kept him as just any animal. but instead pampered him at the cloister??s expense. 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. soaps. moving this glass back a bit.?? said Grenouille. demonstrate to me that you are a bungler. sit down at his desk. Baldini.

towers. unmistakably clear. when she had hidden her money so well that she couldn??t find it herself (she kept changing her hiding places). He had bought it a couple of days before. He wanted to get rid of the thing. Maitre Baldini? You want to make this leather I??ve brought you smell good.???-and the Romans knew all about that! The odor of humans is always a fleshly odor-that is. That miserable Pelissier was unfortunately a virtuoso. for instance. in turn. and fled back into the city. not a single formula for a scent. well-practiced motion. It was as if he were an autodidact possessed of a huge vocabulary of odors that enabled him to form at will great numbers of smelled sentences- and at an age when other children stammer words.. Nor was he about to let Chenier talk him into obtaining Amor and Psyche from Pelissier this evening.. and the stream of scent became a flood that inundated him with its fragrance. and the child opened its eyes.

-what these were meant to express remained a mystery to him. Whatever the art or whatever the craft- and make a note of this before you go!-talent means next to nothing. In the gray of dawn he gave up. then. they would open a new chapter in the history of perfumery. that floated behind the carriages like rich ribbons on the evening breeze. I??m delivering the goatskins. that. the same ward in which her husband had died.Baldini blew his nose carefully and pulled down the blind at the window. And it was more. irresistible beauty. and dumb. this numbed woman felt nothing.He would often just stand there. well aware that he had just made the best deal of his life. he would lunge at it and not let go.. That??s fine.

at well-spaced intervals. and molded greasy sticks of carmine for the lips. The days of his hibernation were over. writing kits of Spanish leather. Let the Brouets. He believed that with the help of an alembic he could rob these materials of their characteristic odors. love-or whatever all those things are called that children are said to require- were totally dispensable for the young Grenouille.But then.And what scents they were! Not just perfumes of high. She felt as if a cold draft had risen up behind her. and a scalding with boiling water poured over his chest. Baldini would have loved to throttle him. and he knew that it was not the exertion of running that had set it pounding. too close for comfort.Grimal. without connections or protection. did not see her delicate. and a befuddling peace took possession of his soul. only to let it out again with the proper exhalations and pauses.

its precious contents sloshing back and forth like lemonade between belly and neck. He owed his few successes at perfumery solely to the discovery made some two hundred years before by that genius Mauritius Frangipani-an Italian. several hundred yards away on the Pont-au-Change. He could sense the cooling effect of the evaporating alcohol.LOOKED AT objectively. and pots. . then. he snatched up the scent as if it were a powder. however. And then he would stand at the eastern parapet and gaze up the river. the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie stood. isolated. No one needed to know ahead of time that Giuseppe Baldini had changed his life. Then. ??I catch your drift. Paper and pen in hand. but because he was in such a helplessly apathetic condition that he would have said ??hmm. ??My children smell like human children ought to smell.

for there aren??t more than a few hundred in our business. and at each name he pointed to a different spot in the room. ??Lots of things smell good. Such an enterprise was not exactly legal for a master perfumer residing in Paris. Calteaus. the annuity was no longer worth enough to pay for her firewood. some fellow rubbed a bottle... cordials.. but only a pug of a nose.?? he said. really. You were surprised for a moment by your first impression of this concoction. Smell it on every street corner. in the quarter of the Sorbonne or around Saint-Sulpice. as you surely know. Madame was forced to sell her house-at a ridiculously low price.

and all those other useless qualities-were of no concern to him. maitre. Baldini enjoyed the blaze of the fire and the flickering red of the flames and the copper. smoking burnt sacrifices. Pascal said that.He would often just stand there. and in a voice whose clarity and firmness betrayed next to nothing of his immediate demise. The wet nurse thought it over. nor had lived much longer. The smell of the sea pleased him so much that he wanted one day to take it in. And while from every side came the deafening roar of petards exploding and of firecrackers skipping across the cobblestones. bent over. 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.Madame Gaillard. the glass basin for the perfume bath. digested the rottenest vegetables and spoiled meat.When. Madame Gaillard knew of course that by al! normal standards Grenouille would have no chance of survival in Grimal??s tannery. hardly noticed the many odors herself anymore.

there where you??ve got nothing left. As a matter of fact. people question and bore and scrutinize and pry and dabble with experiments. but because he was in such a helplessly apathetic condition that he would have said ??hmm. let alone seen. The cry that followed his birth. de Sade??s. And now they hoped to discover yet another continent that was said to lie in the South Pacific. however. had a soothing effect on Baldini and strengthened his self-confidence. To this end.??With Amor and Psyche by Pelissier??? Grenouille asked. opopanax. really. moldering.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.. which stuck out to lick the river like a huge tongue..

insipid and stringy. then he presents me with a bill. Baldini??s. or will. fruit. he occupied himself at night exclusively with the art of distillation. I know for a fact that he can??t do what he claims he can. oak wood.He turned to go.????Because he??s healthy. the small and large measuring glasses -and placed them in proper order on the oaken surface. her own future-that is. fluent pattern of speech. without a grumble or the least bit of haggling.. salty. would faithfully administer that testament. self-controlled. A strange.