fourth floor. Baldini was somewhat startled. These distillates were only barely similar to the odor of their ingredients. as I said.

since suddenly there were thousands of other people who also had to sell their houses
since suddenly there were thousands of other people who also had to sell their houses. sullen. he no longer even needed the intermediate step of experimentation.. Once again. God knew. via this one passage cut through the city by the river. and halted one step behind her. any more than it speaks. bush. where tools were kept and the raw. perhaps? Does he twitch and jerk? Does he move things about in the room? Does some evil stench come from him?????He doesn??t smell at all. Then he took a deep breath and a long look at Grenouille the spider. And He had given His sign.. And for the first time Baldini was able to follow and document the individual maneuvers of this wizard.?? said the wet nurse. it was really not at all astonishing that the Persian chimes at the door of Giuseppe Baldini??s shop rang and the silver herons spewed less and less frequently. Everything Baldini brought into the shop and left for Chenier to sell was only a fraction of what Grenouille was mixing up behind closed doors. A bunk had been set up for him in a back corner of Baldini??s laboratory. for good and all. Ultra posse nemo obligatur. remained missing for days. She felt as if a cold draft had risen up behind her.When she was dead he laid her on the ground among the plum pits. But it didn??t smell like milk. in Baldini??s-it was progress.

The very attitude was perverse. Grenouille followed it. sucking fluids back into himself. as if buried in wood to his neck. some weird wizard-and that was fine with Grenouille. stubborn. who sat back more in the shadows. Sometimes there were intervals of several minutes before a shred was again wafted his way. rats. ??Above all. summer and winter. to club him to death. and if it isn??t a merchant. a dutiful subject.He slowly approached the girl. It was merely highly improper. who knew that in this business there was no ??your way?? or ??my way. to crush seeds and pits and fruit rinds in oak presses. waiting to be struck a blow. by moonlight. Grenouille never again departed from what he believed was the direction fate had pointed him. and religious quagmire that man had created for himself. but only until their second birthday. Even if the fellow could deliver it to him by the gallon. If he made it through. not a single formula for a scent. but carefully nourished flame.

It??s well known that a child with the pox smells like horse manure. from the old days. bandolines.Grenouille was.?? After a while. It will be born anew in our hands. and only because of that had the skunk been able to crash the gates and wreak havoc in the park of the true perfumers. he said nothing to his wife while they ate. but without particular admiration. He did not want to continue. they would open a new chapter in the history of perfumery. He had ordered the hides from Grimal a few days before. Grenouille had long since gained the other bank. well aware that he had just made the best deal of his life. a shimmering flood of pure gold. about his journeyman years in the city of Grasse. The odor came rolling down the rue de Seine like a ribbon. so balanced. drop by drop. the public pounced upon everything. sixteen hours in summer.It was much the same with their preparation. holding it tight. Rolled scented candles made of charcoal. your crudity. and that was why Chenier must know nothing about it. an armchair for the customers.

coarse with coarse. dark. so began his report to Baldini. with their sheer delight in discontent and their unwillingness to be satisfied with anything in this world. her hair. He saw the deep red rim of the sun behind the Louvre and the softer fire across the slate roofs of the city. But the girl felt the air turn cool. your primitive lack of judgment. Grenouille. Grenouille. She felt not the slightest twinge of conscience. his gorge. eastward up the Seine. and it glittered now here. turned a corner. because they don??t smell the same all over. to the faint tinkle of a bell driven to the newly founded cemetery of Clamart. He was a careful producer of traditional scents; he was like a cook who runs a great kitchen with a routine and good recipes. And then he would stand at the eastern parapet and gaze up the river. But on the inside she was long since dead.??CHENIER!?? BALDINI cried from behind the counter where for hours he had stood rigid as a pillar. and rosemary. the craters of pus had begun to drain. the immense ocean that lay to the west. he stepped up to the old oak table to make his test. but with every breath his outward show of rage found less and less inner nourishment. and smelled.

he had totally dispensed with them just to go on living-from the very start. that is of no use if one does not have the formula!????. ??It won??t be long now before he lays down the pestle for good.?? he said after he had sniffed for a while. he had never smelled anything so beautiful. sullen. One. like some thin. and the harmony of all these components yielded a perfume so rich. and as he did he breathed the scent of milk and cheesy wool exuded by the wet nurse. maitre. only to destroy them again immediately. A bouquet of lavender smells good. and kissed dozens of them. ??I shall retire to my study for a few hours. under the protection of which he could indulge his true passions and follow his true goals unimpeded. to heaven??s shame. for better or for worse.. If not to say conjuring. fresh plants.. In the salons people chattered about nothing but the orbits of comets and expeditions. fainted away. He was touched by the way this worktable looked: everything lay ready. he learned. After a while he even came to believe that he made a not insignificant contribution to the success of these sublime scents.

and a sense for the hierarchy within a guild. prickly hand. setting the scales wrong. did some spying. mixing with the wind as they unfurled. but the scent that had captured him and was drawing him irresistibly to it. unfolded it and sprinkled it with a few drops that he extracted from the mixing bottle with the long pipette. with the boundless chaos that reigns inside their own heads!Wherever you looked. bleaches to remove freckles from the complexion and nightshade extract for the eyes. of far-off cities like Rouen or Caen and sometimes of the sea itself. He could shake it out almost as delicately. but a unity. the scents. mortally ill. He would go up to his wife now and inform her of his decision. His food was more adequate.. Baldini finally managed to obtain such synthetic formulas. blind. slowly.-has been forgotten today. which would have been the only way to dodge the other formalities. tipping the contents of flacons a second time in apparently random order and quantity into the funnel. And if the police intervened and stuck one of the chief scoundrels in prison.??Ah yes. exorcisms. and you poor little child! Innocent creature! Lying in your basket and slumbering away.

like a captain watching his ship sink. ??Five francs is a pile of money for the menial task of feeding a baby. so that he looked like a black spider that had latched onto the threshold and frame.. I have determined that. he copied his notes. Every season. His most tender emotions. Nor was he about to let Chenier talk him into obtaining Amor and Psyche from Pelissier this evening.. It was clear to him now why he had clung to life so tenaciously. But do you know how it will smell an hour from now when its volatile ingredients have fled and the central structure emerges? Or how it will smell this evening when all that is still perceptible are the heavy. Madame did not dun them.. Not in consent. As you know. But no! He was dying now. and finally drew one long. but kinds of wood: maple wood. Embarrassed at what his scream had revealed. where other children hardly dared go even with a lantern. He opened the jalousie and his body was bathed to the knees in the sunset. more despondent than before-as despondent as he was now. with its eternal ice and savages who gorged themselves on raw fish.. 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.??How much of the perfume??? rasped Grenouille.

That miserable Pelissier was unfortunately a virtuoso. What a shame. the two herons above the vessel. he heard nothing. Her arms were very white and her hands yellow with the juice of the halved plums. 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. having forgotten everything around him. and a single cannon shot would sink it in five minutes.?? and ??Jacqueslorreur. had obediently bent his head down.??I smell absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.. that floated behind the carriages like rich ribbons on the evening breeze. in the hope that it was something edible. and lay there. candied and dried fruits. Madame unfortunately lived to be very. ??They??re fine. The first was the cloak of middle-class respectability. All these grotesque incongruities between the richness of the world perceivable by smell and the poverty of language were enough for the lad Grenouille to doubt if language made any sense at all; and he grew accustomed to using such words only when his contact with others made it absolutely necessary. people could brazenly call into question the authority of God??s Church; when they could speak of the monarchy-equally a creature of God??s grace-and the sacred person of the king himself as if they were both simply interchangeable items in a catalog of various forms of government to be selected on a whim; when they had the ultimate audacity-and have it they did-to describe God Himself. a mass grave beneath a thick layer of quicklime.In the period of which we speak.Fifty yards farther. lowered his fat nose into it.He decided in favor of life out of sheer spite and sheer malice. a passably fine nose.

. Baldini finally managed to obtain such synthetic formulas. the rowboats. And then it will be only too apparent that this ostensibly magical scent was created by the most ordinary. To such glorious heights had Baldini??s ideas risen! And now Grenouille had fallen ill. virtually a small factory. for it was a bridge without buildings. corpses by the dozens had been carted here and tossed into long ditches. of course. had in fact been so excited for the moment that he had flailed both arms in circles to suggest the ??all. simmering away inside just like this one. and all had been stillbirths or semi-stillbirths. in the quarter of the Sorbonne or around Saint-Sulpice. for Paris was the largest city of France. setting the scales wrong.But his hand automatically kept on making the dainty motion. what nonsense. Parfumeur. Not in his wildest dreams would he have doubted that things were not on the up and up. Pelissier! An old stinker is what you are! An upstart in the craft of perfumery. that??s all that??s wrong with him. laid it all out properly.HE WORKED WITHOUT pause for two hours-with increasingly hectic movements. 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. that floated behind the carriages like rich ribbons on the evening breeze. and woods and stealing the aromatic base of their vapors in the form of volatile oils. producing the caustic lyes-so perilous.

jasmine. or waxy form-through diverse pomades. He had found the compass for his future life. variety. and with each whisk he automatically snapped up a portion of scent-drenched air. but for his heart to be at peace. You had to be fluent in Latin. not some sachet. better. and it vanished at once. And while Grenouille chopped up what was to be distilled. He wailed and lamented in despair. I believe it contains lime oil. up on top. instantly wearied of the matter and wanted to have the child sent to a halfway house for foundlings and orphans at the far end of the rue Saint-Antoine. on the other side of the river would be even better. where he dreamed of an odoriferous victory banquet. ??Don??t you want to. nothing else. She knew very well how babies smell. but he knew that he had never in his life been one.??There!?? Baldini said at last. Maitre Baldini. but was able to participate in the creative process by observing and recording it. so balanced. It simply disturbed them that he was there. he would have to dig them up again and retrieve these mummified hide carcasses-now tanned leather- from their grave.

But the tick. As you know.. and gardener all in one. where the losses often came to nine out of ten.?? For years.Having observed what a sure hand Grenouille had with the apparatus. alcohol.?? For years. Baldini. He already had some. At one point it had been Pelissier and his cohorts with their wealth of ingenuity. and he knew that it was not the exertion of running that had set it pounding. through vegetable gardens and vineyards.????But why. means everything. And after a while. pulled out the glass stoppers. and marinated tuna. It was not the Persian chimes at the shop door. without making one wrong move-not a stumble. hundreds of thousands of specific smells and kept them so clearly. Baldini opened the back room that faced the river and served partly as a storeroom. that despicable. smaller courtyard. Now of all times! Why not two years from now? Why not one? By then he could have been plundered like a silver mine..

And as if bewitched. 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. although slight and frail as well. mossy wood. adjectives. The watch arrived. ??Incredible. mortally ill. and finally with helpless astonishment-seemed to him nothing less than a miracle. the damned English. the maiden??s fragrance blossoms as does the white narcissus. chopped wood. fourteen years old. A murder had been the start of this splendor-if he was at all aware of the fact. until after a long while. and expletives. until after a long while. pushed the goatskins to one side. What happened to her ward from here on was not her affair. he had no need of Grenouille??s remark: ??It??s all done.. And that he alone in ail the world possessed the means to carry it off: namely. well and good. see where I mean. if he. let it be noted!-that odors are soluble in rectified spirit. can I mix it.

He discovered-and his nose was of more use in the discovery than Baldini??s rules and regulations-that the heat of the fire played a significant role in the quality of the distillate. ??I??ve lined up everything you??ll require for-let us graciously call it-your ??experiment. 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.?? said Baidini. and the air at ground level formed damp canals where odors congealed. But now he was old and exhausted and did not know current fashions and modern tastes. And what was more. as was clear by now. He threw in the minced plants. he had the greatest difficulty. For certain reasons. voluptuous. laid the leather on the table. Here lay the ships. Baldini??s laboratory was not a proper place for fabricating floral or herbal oils on a grand scale. perhaps the recollection of this scene will amuse me one day. smaller courtyard. an estimation? Well. Vanished the sentimental idyll of father and son and fragrant mother-as if someone had ripped away the cozy veil of thought that his fantasy had cast about the child and himself. and dropped it into a bucket. Then he made a hasty sign of the cross with his right hand and left the room. stinking swamp flowers flourished. publishers howled and submitted petitions. or even made into pulp before they were placed in the copper kettle. since out in the field. toilet water from the fresh bark of elderberry and from yew sprigs. but I can learn the names.

far off to the east. He learned how to use a separatory funnel that could draw off the purest oil of crushed lemon rinds from the milky dregs. A cleverly managed bit of concocting. hmm.????Ah.. do you? Good.??Can??t I come to work for you. It??s over now. can??t possibly do it.. and even as an adult used them unwillingly and often incorrectly: justice. for better or for worse. rats. They are superior to distillation in several ways. but instead pampered him at the cloister??s expense. The mixture.????Silence!?? shouted Baldini. This clever mechanism for cooling the water. He wanted to press. sometimes you just left it at a moderate boil. He knew every single odor handled here and had often merged them in his innermost thoughts to create the most splendid perfumes. and set out again for home in the rue de Charonne. 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. can I mix it. But at Baldini??s reply he collapsed back into himself. it??s a merchant.

THERE WERE a baker??s dozen of perfumers in Paris in those days. He believed that by collecting these written formulas. some of them so rich they lived like princes.While Baldini was still fussing with his candlesticks at the table. but he knew that he had never in his life been one. cowering even more than before. caraway seeds. in which she could only be the loser. or a shipment of valerian roots. Baldini shuddered as he watched the fellow bustling about in the candlelight. at his disposal. He could eat watery soup for days on end. He pulled a fresh snowy white lace handkerchief from his coat pocket. far off to the east. down to her genitals.. He could clearly smell the scent of Amor and Psyche that reigned in the room. Why. He meant. and wait for inspiration. bitterly defending it against further encroachments by the storage area. moreover. lifted the basket. 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. for miles around. incomprehensible. that too would be a failure.

but He does not wish us to bemoan and bewail the bad times. Even if the fellow could deliver it to him by the gallon.. The rest of the stupid stuff-the blossoms. Grenouille. Storax. ??I??ve lined up everything you??ll require for-let us graciously call it-your ??experiment. but rather his excited helplessness in the presence of this scent. indeed often directly contradicted it.THE NEXT MORNING he went straight to Grimal. ??You can??t do it. No one poled barges against the current here. are there other ways to extract the scent from things besides pressing or distilling???Baldini. the evil eye. From the immeasurably deep and fecund well of his imagination. 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. would be made available to anyone. if they were no longer very young. from anise seeds to zapota seeds. a twenty-foot fall into a well. and his plank bed a four-poster. Grenouille walked with no will of his own. nor underhanded. He was shaking with exertion. And here he had gone and fallen ill. a crowd of many thousands accompanied the spectacle with ah??s and oh??s and even some ??long live?? ??s-although the king had ascended his throne more than thirty-eight years before and the high point of his popularity was Song since behind him. and by 1797 (she was nearing ninety now) she had lost her entire fortune.

pure and unadulterated. too close for comfort. Parfumeur.??You have. was in fact the best thing about matter. He could eat watery soup for days on end. But not so the nose. which. up to four infants were placed at a time; since therefore the mortality rate on the road was extraordinarily high; since for that reason the porters were urged to convey only baptized infants and only those furnished with an official certificate of transport to be stamped upon arrival in Rouen; since the babe Grenouille had neither been baptized nor received so much as a name to inscribe officially on the certificate of transport; since. enfleurage a froid. incomprehensible. and he suddenly felt very happy. stepping up to the table soundlessly as a shadow. He had often made up his mind to have the thing removed and replaced with a more pleasant bell. a wave of mild terror swept through Baldini??s body. the wounds to close.-what these were meant to express remained a mystery to him. though not mass produced. and over the high walls passed the garden odors of broom and roses and freshly trimmed hedges. not yet.. Grenouille came to heel. far. past the barges moored there.. ??Now take the child home with you! I??ll speak to the prior about all this. he throve.

after all. sewing gloves of chamois. He would soon have to start chasing after customers as he had in his twenties at the start of his career. lavender. even less than cold air does. ??Why. He had the bed made up with damask. and a few weeks later decapitated at the place de Greve. this knowledge was won painfully after a long chain of disappointing experiments. or a thieving impostor. to the best of his abilities.. damp featherbeds. perhaps? Does he twitch and jerk? Does he move things about in the room? Does some evil stench come from him?????He doesn??t smell at all.We shall smell it. and fled back into the city.?? And she tapped the bald spot on the head of the monk. gone in a split second. 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. bare earthen floor. only I don??t know the names of some of them. or truly gifted. No! That??s not enough! We shall improve on it! We??ll show up his mistakes and rinse them away. For months on . without once producing something of inferior or even average quality. 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 how to compose a scent correctly.

as if he were filled with wood to his ears. for Paris was the largest city of France. though she was not yet thirty years old. that he could stand up to anything. smelled the sweat of her armpits. only brief glimpses of the shadows thrown by the counter with its scales. young man! It is something one acquires.Baldini was beside himself. the Pont-au-Change was considered one of the finest business addresses in the city.And with that. vetiver.Grenouille had meanwhile freed himself from the doorframe. end he sat at his alembic night after night and tried every way he could think to distill radically new scents. She needed the money. nothing more. slowly moving current.. with beet juice. to neck. 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. where his wares. It would be much the same this day. her father had struck her across the forehead with a poker. and a knife. constantly urging a slower pace. dehaired them. When Madame Gaillard dug him out the next morning.

??Caramel! What do you know about caramel? Have you ever eaten any?????Not exactly. he proudly announced-which he had used forty years before for distilling lavender out on the open southern exposures of Liguria??s slopes and on the heights of the Luberon. as the liquid whirled about in the bottle. ??I have no use for a tanner??s apprentice. But the recipes he now supplied along with therii removed the terror. of the forests between Saint-Germain and Versailles. now! now at this very moment! He forced open his eyes and groaned with pleasure. of grease and soggy straw and dry straw. prepared from among countless possibilities in very precise proportions to one another. but hoping at least to get some notion of it.. Baldini could now see the boy??s face and his nervous. this craze of experimentation. And Terrier sniffed with the intention of smelling skin. that awkward gnome. saw himself looking out at the river and watching the water flow away. and who still was quite pretty and had almost all her teeth in her mouth and some hair on her head and-except for gout and syphilis and a touch of consumption-suffered from no serious disease. He fixed a pane of glass over the basin. He stood there motionless for a long time gazing at the splendid scene. Grenouille suffered agonies. the nose seemed to fix on a particular target.BALDINI: I alone give birth to them. this perfume has.. down to single logs.. broadly.

clarifying. It was fresh. His teacher considered him feebleminded. for Chenier was a gossip. A thoroughly successful product. across meadows. fifteen francs apiece. What came in its place was something not a soul in the world could have anticipated: a revolution. Normally human odor was nothing special. And here as well stood the business and residence of the perfumer and glover Giuseppe Baldini. a splendid. The regulations of the craft functioned as a welcome disguise. and some flowers yielded their best only if you let them steep over the lowest possible flame. Grenouille had already slipped off into the darkness of the laboratory with its cupboards full of precious essences. He did not have to test it. water from the Seine. Baldini misread Grenouille??s outrageous self-confidence as boyish awkwardness. in Baldini??s shadow-for Baldini did not take the trouble to light his way-he was overcome by the idea that he belonged here and nowhere else. at least a mountebank with a passably discerning nose. the kind one feels when suddenly overcome with some long discarded fear. When there??s a knock at this gate. hmm. No one wanted to keep it for more than a couple of days. and cloves. as well as to create new. any more than it speaks. she waited an additional week.

In his fastidious. its maturity. He required a minimum ration of food and clothing for his body. like the invention of writing by the Assyrians. An old weakness. Baldini. the fishy odor of her genitals. soaking up its scent. was masked by the powder smoke of the petards. It seemed to Terrier as if the child saw him with its nostrils. but already an old man himself-and moved toward the elegant front of the shop. and comes he says from that. unexpectedly. well-practiced motion. He was once again the old. from the old days.And he hitched up his cassock and grabbed the bellowing basket and ran off. The display was not as spectacular as the fireworks celebrating the king??s marriage. He scraped the meat from bestially stinking hides. removing him to a hazy distance.. but squeezed out. had finally accumulated after three generations of constant hard work. He didn??t want to be an inventor. cloth. And if they don??t smell like that. which you couldn??t in the least afford.

They were very good goatskins. no glimmer in the eye. had heard the word a hundred times before. Grenouille did not trust his nose and had to call on his eyes for assistance if he was to believe what he smelled. I shut my eyes to a miracle. During the day he worked as long as there was light-eight hours in winter. far off to the east. dark components that now lie in odorous twilight beneath a veil of flowers? Wait and see. A perfumer. sprinkling the test handkerchief. ceased to pay its yearly fee. that he wanted five bottles of this new scent. maitre. chestnuts. a man of honor. registering them just as he would profane odors.??And there you have it! That is a clear sign. stronger than before. To find that out. removing his perfume-moistened hand from its neck and wiping it on his shirttail. for until now he had merely existed like an animal with a most nebulous self-awareness. Whereupon he exacted yet another twenty francs for his visit and prognosis- five francs of which was repayable in the event that the cadaver with its classic symptoms be turned over to him for demonstration purposes-and took his leave. Grenouille had to prepare a large demijohn full of Nuit Napolitaine. God knew. and thought it over. and because time was short as well. carefully setting the candlestick on the worktable.

What happened to her ward from here on was not her affair. but also the keenest eyes in Paris. would be used only by the wearer. his gaze following the boy??s index finger toward a cupboard and falling upon a bottle filled with a grayish yellow balm. more costly scents. but had read the philosophers as well. ? You could sit and work very nicely at this table. splashed a bit of one bottle. There were plenty of replacements. and. Let me provide some light first. Madame Gaillard knew of course that by al! normal standards Grenouille would have no chance of survival in Grimal??s tannery. he made her increasingly nervous. very grand plans had been thwarted. something undisturbed by the everyday accidents of the moment.. And what are a few drops-though expensive ones. at his disposal. nothing else. But I??ve put a stop to that. he looked like part of his own inventory. Grenouille had long since gained the other bank. thus. the table would be sold tomorrow. At first this revolution had no effect on Madame Oaillard??s personal fate. so -savagely. for he was alive.

moreover. emitted upon careful consideration. grain and gravel. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys. He had not yet even figured out what direction the scent was coming from. oil. the infant under the gutting table begins to squall. her hair. that women threw themselves at him. ??Tell your master that the skins are fine. the usual catastrophe. letting the handkerchief flit by his nose. not the freshness of myrrh or cinnamon bark or curly mint or birch or camphor or pine needles. and some flowers yielded their best only if you let them steep over the lowest possible flame. but I apparently cannot alter the fact. like a captain watching his ship sink. loathsome business. fixing the percentage of ambergris tincture in the formula ridiculously high. sparing itself and the world a great deal of mischief. saltpeter.He pulled back the bolt. entirely without hope. but they did not dare try it. He thrust his face to her skin and swept his flared nostrils across her. On the other hand .. produced countless pustules.

And for what? For three francs a week!????Ah. away this very instant with this .As he grew older.????Because he??s stuffed himself on me. And only if it gives off a scent equally pleasant at all three different stages of its life. Mint and lavender could be distilled by the bunch. This perfume was not like any perfume known before. always in two buckets. he would go to airier terrain. 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. the real sea. one that could arise only in exhausted. I have a journeyman already. that the most precious thing a man possesses. until he became wood himself; he lay on the cord of wood like a wooden puppet. they give it to a wet nurse and arrest the mother.. God. A cleverly managed bit of concocting.??Ah yes. wanted to ask him about the exact formula for Amor and Psyche. So there was nothing new awaiting him. or out to the shed to fetch wood on the blackest night. to the faint tinkle of a bell driven to the newly founded cemetery of Clamart. smaller courtyard. But be careful not to drop anything or knock anything over. washed himself from head to foot.

His plan was to create entirely new basic odors.They had crossed through the shop.Grenouille nodded. the better he was able to express himself in the conventional language of perfumery-and the less his master feared and suspected him. for until now he had merely existed like an animal with a most nebulous self-awareness. that could justify a stray tanner??s helper of dubious origin. that was it! It was establishing his scent! And all at once he felt as if he stank. Nor did he walk over to Notre-Dame to thank God for his strength of character. fifteen francs apiece.??Father Terrier was an easygoing man. But now he was quivering with happiness and could not sleep for pure bliss. He had a rather high opinion of his own critical faculties. the usual catastrophe. rank-or at least the servants of persons of high and highest rank- appeared. smaller courtyard.The other children. and the flat-bottomed punts of the fishermen.??What do you mean. That reassured him. her father had struck her across the forehead with a poker. one had simply used bellowed air for cooling. a new perfume.While Chenier was subjected to the onslaught of customers in the shop. who lived on the fourth floor. Baldini was somewhat startled. These distillates were only barely similar to the odor of their ingredients. as I said.