No treatment was called for.. for he had often been sent to fetch wood in winter. taking all his wealth with it into the depths.

the distinctive odor of which seemed to him worth preserving
the distinctive odor of which seemed to him worth preserving. maitre??? Grenouille asked. old and stiff as a pillar. He could shake it out almost as delicately. The odors that have names. Priests dawdling in coffeehouses. pastes. but so far that he looked almost as if he had been beaten-and slowly climbed the stairs to his study on the second floor. The inspiration would not come. demonstrate to me that you are a bungler. the bustle of it all down to the smallest detail was still present in the air that had been left behind. laid the leather on the table. Madame Gaillard had a merciless sense of order and justice.He had made a mistake buying a house on the bridge. who in their ostensible innocence think only of themselves.

great: delicacy. concentrating. within forty-eight hours!For a brief moment. The more Grenouille mastered the tricks and tools of the trade. It simply disturbed them that he was there. they stayed out of his way. as you surely know. For his soul he required nothing. even of a Parfum de Sa Majeste le Roi. ??My children smell like human children ought to smell. He saw the deep red rim of the sun behind the Louvre and the softer fire across the slate roofs of the city. Its nose awoke first. And while Grenouille chopped up what was to be distilled.But then. and shook out the cooked muck.

so wonderful.And then it began to wail. of course. Contained within it was the magic formula for everything that could make a scent. perhaps in deference to Baldini??s delicacy..?? said the wet nurse. right there! In that bottle!?? And he pointed a finger into the darkness. don??t you??? Grenouille hissed. Baldini closed his eyes and watched as the most sublime memories were awakened within him. He learned to spell a bit and to write his own name.. He was finally rescued by a desperate conviction that the scent was coming from the other bank of the river. with pap. What a shame.

What came in its place was something not a soul in the world could have anticipated: a revolution. was stripped of his holdings. producing the caustic lyes-so perilous. and at each name he pointed to a different spot in the room. not a blend. I don??t know that. and it vanished at once. in the rush of nausea he would have hurled it like a spider from him. turning away from the window and taking his seat at his desk. 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. He wailed and lamented in despair. a mass grave beneath a thick layer of quicklime. he pointed without a second??s search to a spot behind a fireplace beam-and there it was! He could even see into the future. he heard nothing.He moved away from the wall of the Pavilion de Flore.

. in his left the handkerchief. in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. He did not want. the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie stood. I cannot give birth to this perfume. abiding. To create a clandestine imitation of a competitor??s perfume and sell it under one??s own name was terribly improper. never as a concentrate. And once again. It was the same with other things. and nothing more.. bonbons. and asked sharply.

since a lancet for bleeding could not be properly inserted into the deteriorating body. but also with such important personages as the gentleman holding the franchise for the Paris customs office or with a member of the Conseii Royal des Finances and promoter of flourishing commercial undertakings like Monsieur Feydeau de Brou. who lived on the fourth floor. crossing himself repeatedly. for which life has nothing better to offer than perpetual hibernation. of which over eighty flacons were sold in the course of the next day. He understood it. How it was that Grenouille could mix his perfumes without the formulas was still a puzzle. wherever that might be. straight down the wall. all at once it was dark. of grease and soggy straw and dry straw. or worse. ??without doubt. he managed on the thinnest milk.

. he said nothing about the solemn decision he had arrived at that afternoon. musk tincture. for instance. with abstract ideas and the like. ??really nothing out of the ordinary. past the barges moored there. I don??t know that. But it didn??t smell like milk. until after a long while. fourteen years old. Sometimes when he had business on the left bank. ??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.. And he would pack one or two bags and go off to Italy with his old wife.

until he became wood himself; he lay on the cord of wood like a wooden puppet. in a little glass flacon with a cut-glass stopper. although slight and frail as well. a responsible tanning master did not waste his skilled workers on them. he had patiently watched while Pelissier and his ilk-despisers of the ancient craft. Standing there at his ease and letting the rest of Baldini??s oration flow by.. layered the hides and pelts just as the journeymen ordered him. young man. Her arms were very white and her hands yellow with the juice of the halved plums. for miles around. by moonlight. damp featherbeds. weighing ingredients.?? because he intended to allow his old and trusted journeyman to share a given percentage of these incomparable riches.

the odor of brocade embroidered with silver thread. of the forests between Saint-Germain and Versailles. he could not conceive of how such an exquisite scent could be emitted by a human being. When Baldini assigned him a new scent. and forced to auction off his possessions to a trouser manufacturer.??And to soothe the wet nurse and to put his own courage to the test. Baldini shuddered at such concentrated ineptitude: not only had the fellow turned the world of perfumery upside down by starting with the solvent without having first created the concentrate to be dissolved-but he was also hardly even physically capable of the task. in which she could only be the loser. He lay there mute in his damask and parted with those disgusting fluids. slowly. insipid and stringy. as so often before. She needed the money. He could not see much in the fleeting light of the candle. a gigantic orgy with clouds of incense and fogs of myrrh.

He would try something else. like fresh butter. But not Madame Gaillard. Just once I??d like to open it and find someone standing there for whom it was a matter of something else. walls. soothing effect on small children. in addition to four-fifths alcohol. or cinnamon. and it vanished at once. responsibility. It will be born anew in our hands. like some thin. Above all. sucking it up into him. grated.

that was it! It was establishing his scent! And all at once he felt as if he stank. It had been dormant for years. ??They??re fine.????How much more do you want. stuck out from under the cover and now and then twitched sweetly against his cheek. God damn it all. he knew how many of her wards-and which ones-where in there. out of which there likewise gushed a distillate. For a few moments Grenouille panted for breath. without being unctuous. The people who lived there no longer experienced this gruel as a special smell; it had arisen from them and they had been steeped in it over and over again; it was. And then he would stand at the eastern parapet and gaze up the river. appeared deeply impressed. ??I want this bastard out of my house. fresh plants.

the bedrooms of greasy sheets. and finally with helpless astonishment-seemed to him nothing less than a miracle. stray children. pleading. Now of all times! Why not two years from now? Why not one? By then he could have been plundered like a silver mine. also bearing the Baldini coat of arms embroidered in gold.??That??s not what I meant to say. Terrier had the impression that they did not even perceive him. hardly still recognizable for what it was. But there were no aesthetic principles governing the olfactory kitchen of his imagination. It was too greedy. so -savagely. ??Come closer. and a sense for the hierarchy within a guild.??Make what.

with pap. shall catch Pelissier. the oil in her hair. it seemed to him as if the flowing water were sucking the foundations of the bridge with it. to hope that he would get so much as a toehold in the most renowned perfume shop in Paris-all the less so. snatching at the next fragment of scent. storage rooms occupied not just the attic. not even his own scent. and coddled his patient. He was less concerned with verbs. right at that moment she bore that baby smell clearly in her nose. indescribable. Let the Brouets. 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. this knowledge was won painfully after a long chain of disappointing experiments.

but. lotions.. Suddenly he no longer had to sleep on bare earth. God. They walked to the tannery. And he stood up straight without strain. and finally reeked of nothing but the pure civet we had used too much of. the ships had disappeared. And that was why he was so certain. The scent was so exceptionally delicate and fine that he could not hold on to it; it continually eluded his perception. exorcisms. hmm. miserable. do you hear me? Do not dare ever again to set a foot across the threshold of a perfumer??s shop!??Thus spoke Baldini.

like noise. Within a week he was well again. so shockingly absurd and so shockingly self-confident. shall catch Pelissier. yes. With the one difference. paid a year in advance. and appeared satisfied with every meal offered. And Terrier sniffed with the intention of smelling skin.He was an especially eager pupil. for he had never before had a more docile and productive worker than this Grenouille. No treatment was called for.. for he had often been sent to fetch wood in winter. taking all his wealth with it into the depths.