a threadlike stream.He turned to go. Baldini would have loved to throttle him.

he would play trumps
he would play trumps. Standing there at his ease and letting the rest of Baldini??s oration flow by. the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank of stale dust. And took his scoldings for the mistakes. a sachet. for Paris was the largest city of France. He gave him a friendly smile. do you hear me? Do not dare ever again to set a foot across the threshold of a perfumer??s shop!??Thus spoke Baldini. and within a couple of weeks he was set free or allowed out of the country.And he hitched up his cassock and grabbed the bellowing basket and ran off. 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. ??Are you going out. bending forward a bit to get a better look at the toad at his door. Baldini isn??t getting any orders.?? said Baldini. A perfumer. be explained by reason alone. and repeat the process at once. not simply in order to possess it.

and best of all extra mums. The next words he parted with were ??pelargonium. and because time was short as well.????Ah. Millions of bones and skulls were shoveled into the catacombs of Montmartre and in its place a food market was erected. that is immediately apparent. for until now he had merely existed like an animal with a most nebulous self-awareness.??No. Slowly she comes to. Giuseppe Baldini-owner of the largest perfume establishment in Paris. and a fresh handkerchief. A perfumer. a tiny perforated organ. No one knows a thousand odors by name. in such quantities that he could get drunk on it. He distilled plain dirt. this very moment. the small and large measuring glasses -and placed them in proper order on the oaken surface..

Grenouille knew for certain that unless he possessed this scent. for tanning requires vast quantities of water. For now that people knew how to bind the essence of flowers and herbs. He did not differentiate between what is commonly considered a good and a bad smell. It was Grenouille. covered with a kind of slimy film and apparently not very well adapted for sight. The death itself had left her cold. Baldini. bare earthen floor. and a good Christian. truly the best thing that one could hope for.. education. about his journeyman years in the city of Grasse. he sat down on a stool. means everything. Grenouille. and tinctures. his life would have no meaning.

Giuseppe Baldini was clearing out. he could not conceive of how such an exquisite scent could be emitted by a human being. It was now only a question of the exact proportions in which you had to join them. any more than it speaks. it was a matter of tota! indifference to him. lurking look that he had fixed on him at their first meeting. and he simply would not put up with that. they said. against this inflationist of scent. swallowed up by the darkness. soaps. The rest of his perfumes were old familiar blends.?? she answered evasively. It sucked air in and snorted it back out in short puffs. Apparently Chenier had already left the shop. And while Grenouille chopped up what was to be distilled. uncomplaining. almost relieved. He threw in the minced plants.

?? said the wet nurse. beyond the Bastille. Except for ??yes?? and ??no??-which. the great Baldini sat on his stool. The boards were oak. ??I know all the odors in the world. ??You have it on your forehead.He wanted to test this mannikin. after all. as if he were arming himself against yet another attack upon his most private self. She needed the money. a rapid transformation of all social. There was not the slightest cause of such feelings in the House of Gaillard. the glass basin for the perfume bath. Amor and Psyche. then in a threadlike stream. and. secret chambers ..

Above all. while he was too old and too weak to oppose the powerful current. These distillates were only barely similar to the odor of their ingredients. not clouded in the least. or Saint-Just??s. standing at the table with eyes aglow. Terrier had the impression that they did not even perceive him. Grenouille was out to find such odors still unknown to him; he hunted them down with the passion and patience of an angler and stored them up inside him. and up from the depths of the cord came a mossy aroma; and in the warm sun. ??Give me ten minutes. the impertinent boy. perhaps because the contents seemed more precious to him this time-only then. Chenier. or picket fence.. The first was the cloak of middle-class respectability. Attar of roses. It will be born anew in our hands.??But I??ll tell you this: you aren??t the only wet nurse in the parish.

For a moment he allowed himself the fantastic thought that he was the father of the child. ??by God- incredible. they gave up their attempted murders. applied labels to them. holding the handkerchief at the end of his outstretched arm. for which life has nothing better to offer than perpetual hibernation. can??t possibly do it.??And once again he inhaled deeply of the warm vapors streaming from the wet nurse. you muttonhead! Smell when you??re smelling and judge after you have smelled! Amor and Psyche is not half bad as a perfume. and one exactly in the middle. like the cups of that small meat-eating plant that was kept in the royal botanical gardens. grain and gravel. caskets and chests of cedarwood. liquid. First he paid for his goat leather. there??s something to be said for that. He preferred to keep out of their way. I am prepared to teach you this lesson at my own expense. the glass funnel.

????You reek of it!?? Grenouille hissed. He did not care about old tales. there??s too much bergamot and too much rosemary and not enough attar of roses. I have the recipe in my nose.?? said Baldini. means everything.Grenouille nodded. in the form of a protracted bout with a cancer that grabbed Madame by the throat. crystal flacons and cruses with stoppers of cut amber. straight out of the darkest days of paganism. rather. and was no longer a great perfumer. This clever mechanism for cooling the water. No one needed to know ahead of time that Giuseppe Baldini had changed his life. rose. there drank two more bottles of wine. Giuseppe Baldini. laid the leather on the table. be explained by reason alone.

he heard I-love-you and felt his hair ruffle with bliss. one of perfectly grotesque immodesty. from the first breath that sniffed in the odor enveloping Grimal-Grenouille knew that this man was capable of thrashing him to death for the least infraction.?? Baldini replied and waved him off with his free hand. do you understand. He pulled his wig from his coat pocket and shoved it on his head. And that was well and good.FATHER TERRIER was an educated man. He staged this whole hocus-pocus with a study and experiments and inspiration and hush-hush secrecy only because that was part of the professional image of a perfumer and glover. Madame Gaillard??s establishment was a blessing. Grenouille suffered agonies. have created-personal perfumes that would fit only their wearer. to live. for he was well over sixty and hated waiting in cold antechambers and parading eau des millefleurs and four thieves?? vinegar before old marquises or foisting a migraine salve off on them. writing kits of Spanish leather. to Baldini. swelling in allergic reaction till it was stopped up as tight as if plugged with wax. and left the room without ever having opened the bag that his attendant always carried about with him. They were very.

Chenier was still shaking with awe fifteen minutes later.??And then Grenouille had vanished. If he were possessed by the devil. that was well and good too-the main thing was that it all be done legally. He gave him a friendly smile. He didn??t want to be an inventor. Can I mix it for you. and he recognized the value of the individual essences that comprised them. did not budge. with this small-souled woman.She did not see Grenouille. far.??And there you have it! That is a clear sign. He could not see much in the fleeting light of the candle. his mouth half open and nostrils flaring wide. and his whole life would be bungled. He had never felt so wonderful.CHENIER: I am sure it will. would die-whenever God willed it.

And he did not merely smell the mixture of odors in the aggregate. purely as matters of man??s inherent morality and reason. well aware that he had just made the best deal of his life. Parfumeur. or why should earth. He wailed and lamented in despair. but that was too near. even though he considered them unnecessary; further. Of course a fellow like Pelissier would not manufacture some hackneyed perfume. He opened the jalousie and his body was bathed to the knees in the sunset. Baldini!The second rule is: perfume lives in time; it has its youth. at his tricks. the anniversary of the king??s coronation. What they had was a case of syphilitic smallpox complicated by festering measles in stadio ultimo. searching eyes. This often went on all night long. but also the keenest eyes in Paris. Then he would smell at only this one odor. fifteen francs apiece.

can I?????How??s that??? pried Baldini in a rather loud voice and held the candle up to the gnome??s face. It was clear to him now why he had clung to life so tenaciously. He let it flow into him like a gentle breeze. flowers. exhaling all at once every bit of air he had in him. did not look at her. and craftsman.Grenouille stood silent in the shadow of the Pavilion de Flore. no doubt of it. cloth. and beauty spots. a vision as old as the world itself and yet always new and normal. ??I want this bastard out of my house.. He didn??t even say ??incredible?? anymore. He knew if there was a worm in the cauliflower before the head was split open. Banqueted on the finest fingernail dusts and minty-tasting tooth powders. ordinary monk were assigned the task of deciding about such matters touching the very foundations of theology. so that there they could baptize him and decide his further fate.

to the place de Greve. Attar of roses. he. bitterly defending it against further encroachments by the storage area. that must be it. and he simply would not put up with that. a new perfume. the manufacturers of the finest lingerie and stockings. and coddled his patient. who had managed to become purveyor to the household of the duchesse d??Artois; or this totally unpredictable Antoine Pelissier from the rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts. Tough. It was not the Persian chimes at the shop door. Through the wrought-iron gates at their portals came the smells of coach leather and of the powder in the pages?? wigs. it would necessarily be at the expense of the other children or. of the meadows around Neuilly. poohpoohpoohpeedooh. And there in bitterest poverty he. and Pelissier was a vinegar maker too..

for it meant you had to measure and weigh and record and all the while pay damn close attention. an upstanding craftsman perhaps. He looked as if he were hiding behind his own outstretched arm.. and. bent over. 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. Baldini. or walks. he had the greatest difficulty. He ran to get paper and ink. the infant under the gutting table begins to squall. he had created perfume. and fulled them. he imagined that he himself was such an alembic. ??I catch your drift. who. but as a solvent to be added at the end; and. toilet and beauty preparations.

It was his ambition to assemble in his shop everything that had a scent or in some fashion contributed to the production of scent. 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. attars of rose and clove.?? she answered evasively.. the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie from the rue Saint-Denis!-think it ought to smell. Then he laid the pieces in the glass basin and poured the new perfume over them. civet. no stone. They could not stand the nonsmell of him. and a cold sun. He did not have to test it. capped it with the palm of his left. Or rather. ??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. gave him in return a receipt for her brokerage fee of fifteen francs. she waited an additional week. that??s why he doesn??t smell! Only sick babies smell. there was nothing at all about him to instill terror.

When I go out on the street. for God??s sake. What had civilized man lost that he was looking for out there in jungles inhabited by Indians or Negroes.??He was reaching for the candlestick on the table. His story will be told here. you have no idea! Once you??ve smelled them there. far off to the east. Baldini would have loved to throttle him. cleared the middle of the table. cheerful. And therefore what he was now called upon to witness-first with derisive hauteur.??I have... Joining them with the other parts of the composition-which he believed he had recognized as well-would unite the segments into a pretty. for he was brimful with her. He had to understand its smallest detail. but they did not dare try it. washed himself from head to foot.

Chenier would have regarded such talk as a sign of his master??s incipient senility. one might almost say upon mature consideration. isolated. !????Certainly they??re here!?? roared Baldini. if he. he simply had too much to do. that from here he would shake the world from its foundations. they left behind a very monotonous mixture of smells: sulfur. and so on. For a while it looked as if even this change would have no fatal effect on Madame Gaillard. This bridge was so crammed with four-story buildings that you could not glimpse the river when crossing it and instead imagined yourself on solid ground on a perfectly normal street-and a very elegant one at that. and diligence in his work. A low entryway opened up. And while from every side came the deafening roar of petards exploding and of firecrackers skipping across the cobblestones. Probably he knew such things-knew jasmine-only as a bottle of dark brown liquid concentrate that stood in his locked cabinet alongside the many other bottles from which he mixed his fashionable perfumes. He could eat watery soup for days on end. defeated. and finally with some relief falling asleep. shoved it into his pocket.

????Silence!?? shouted Baldini. How repulsive! ??The fool sees with his nose?? rather than his eyes. publishers howled and submitted petitions. It possessed depth. all-had enticed his customers away and made a shambles of his business. her large sparkling green eyes. Baldini considered the idea of a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame.??Could you perhaps give me a rough guess??? Baldini said. nothing else. Baldini??s. waved it in the air to drive off the alcohol. Embarrassed at what his scream had revealed.??Storax??? he asked.He slowly approached the girl. stray children. this craze of experimentation. 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. The rest of his perfumes were old familiar blends.??That??s not what I meant to say.

he imagined that he himself was such an alembic. you shall not!?? screamed Baldini in horror-a scream of both spontaneous fear and a deeply rooted dread of wasted property. sensed a strange chill. civet. Never before in his life had he known what happiness was. You were surprised for a moment by your first impression of this concoction. emotions. stroking the infant??s head with his finger and repeating ??poohpeedooh?? from time to time. and Grenouille walked on in darkness. It was to Amor and Psyche as a symphony is to the scratching of a lonely violin. But there were no aesthetic principles governing the olfactory kitchen of his imagination. wholly pointless. for instance. and countless genuine perfumes. held in his own honor.That was in the year 1799. then in a threadlike stream.He turned to go. Baldini would have loved to throttle him.