Hungersnot

Kapitel 1

[Horror] Perfume

Section 1

In the 18th century, a man emerged in France. That era produced many talented individuals, but also a number of geniuses and ruthless ones.

This person was one of the most talented and cruel individuals. This is the story of this man. His name was...

His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He was one of other geniuses and eccentrics, such as Desade, Saint-Just, and Fouché.

On the contrary, Bonaparte's name has been forgotten today, and this is certainly not because Grenouille was arrogant.

In terms of their greatness, contempt for humanity, and cruelty, in short, in their atheism, these more famous and insidious figures are somewhat...

He was inferior not because his genius and ambition were confined to areas where history had left no trace, but because of his limited scope: Qi (氣).

A fleeting kingdom of flavor.

In that era we're talking about, cities were always filled with a stench that's hard for us modern people to imagine.

The streets reeked of feces, the backyards of houses reeked of urine, and the stairwells reeked of rotting wood and rats.

The kitchen reeked of rotten vegetables and mutton fat; the poorly ventilated rooms emitted a musty, dusty smell; the bedroom...

It emitted the stench of greasy sheets, damp comforters, and a pungent, sweet, and somewhat foul odor from a chamber pot.

The smells were pungent. The fireplace reeked of sulfur, the tanneries of caustic soda, and the slaughterhouse of blood.

A foul odor. People emit a sour, sweaty smell and the stench of unwashed clothes; their breath smells of rotting teeth.

Their stomachs belched with the foul smell of onion juice; and if these people were no longer young, they exuded a musty odor.

The stench of cheese, yogurt, and tumors was overwhelming. Rivers, squares, and churches reeked; the air under bridges and in palaces was foul.

The stench was unbearable. The peasants smelled like church workers, the workshop apprentices smelled like their master's wives, and the entire aristocratic class reeked.

Even the king reeked; he stank like a wild beast, while the queen smelled like an old female goat, both in summer and winter.

That's right. Because in the eighteenth century, the destructive activity of bacteria was not yet restricted, and any human activity, regardless of...

Whether destructive or constructive, the emergence and decline of life are not linked by any different stench.

They are together.

Of course, Paris is the smelliest, because it's the largest city in France. And within Paris, there's another place...

The area between Via Fore Street and Via Castelberg, which is the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents, is incredibly smelly, like hell.

It stank. For eight hundred years, people brought the dead from the chief hospital and nearby parishes here; for eight hundred years, every day...

Dozens of corpses were transported in each grave on handcarts and dumped in long pits; for eight hundred years, the tombs and remains have been preserved there.

In the morgue, the bones piled up layer upon layer. Even later, on the eve of the French Revolution, several morgues were dangerously...

After the collapse, the stench emanating from the cemetery not only sparked protests from nearby residents, but also led them to actually rise up.

The riots occurred, and only then was the area sealed off and abandoned. Millions of bones and skulls were then unearthed and transported...

At the underground base where Montmartre was to be seized, people built a food trading market.

Here, in the most stinking place in the entire kingdom, on July 17, 1738, Jean-Baptiste...

Grenouille came into this world. That day was one of the hottest days of the year. The heat was like lead.

The pressure on the cemetery caused a stir outside the city, spreading to the neighboring sweet streets and alleys. Steam rose from the rotten fern fruit and charred animal horns, all mixed together.

The smell of the road. Grenouille's mother was standing beside a fish stall on Rue du Feuer when her labor pains began.

Scale the carp that had been gutted earlier. These fish were supposedly brought from the Seine that morning, but...

A foul stench had already permeated the air, its odor overpowering the smell of the corpse. Grenouille's mother...

She didn't notice the stench of the fish, nor the stench of the corpse, because her nose had become so dulled and numb.

The extent of her pain was immense, especially since her body was in pain, and the pain had completely impaired her senses from receiving external stimuli. She...

She desperately hoped the pain would stop and the dreaded labor would end soon. This was her fifth child.

She gave birth to all five babies right here at the fish stall, and all five were stillborn or partially stillborn because they were born here.

The bloody flesh was not much different from the fish intestines lying there, and it hadn't lived long either; by evening...

Whether it was the fish's anus, raw meat, or anything else, everything was shoveled away and loaded onto a handcart.

They'd be transported to the cemetery or dumped in the river. It seems it will be the same again today. Grenouille's mother was still a young woman.

A 25-year-old woman, quite pretty, with almost all her teeth and some hair, except for gout.

Apart from syphilis and mild tuberculosis, she doesn't have any serious illnesses. She hopes to live a long life, perhaps another five years.

Perhaps ten years, maybe even just one marriage. To be a respected second wife to a craftsman, or… Grenouille.

Jehovah's mother hoped it would all pass quickly. When the labor pains began, she crouched down under the fish-slaughtering platform, where she stood like the five...

The process involved cutting the umbilical cord of the newborn creature with a fish-slaughtering knife. However, this was followed by heat and a foul odor—

She didn't smell the stench of a foul odor, but rather an unbearable, numbing smell; she felt...

Like the scent of lilies in a field, or like the smell of too many daffodils in a small room—

She fainted, fell to one side, tumbled from the fish-slaughtering platform to the middle of the road, and lay there, clutching the fish in her hand.

knife.

People were shouting and running, a crowd formed a circle, and someone called the police. Grenouille's mother

Her mother was still lying on the road, clutching the knife in her hand. Later, she slowly regained consciousness.

What happened to you?

"fine."

What are you doing with that knife?

"Nothing."

"Where did the blood on your skirt come from?"

"It got on my skin while I was cleaning fish."

She stood up, threw away the knife, and went to wash herself. Just then, the newborn child beneath the fish-slaughtering platform...

west unexpectedly burst into tears. Everyone looked down from the platform and saw the newborn lying in the fish's entrails and the severed fish head.

In the middle, a swarm of flies landed on him, so they dragged him out. People followed the rules and entrusted the baby to a...

The wet nurse was arrested, while the mother was apprehended. Because she confessed readily and without hesitation, she did indeed intend to...

She did the same thing as the previous five times, leaving the newborns to die under the slaughtering platform, and so people sued her.

She was sentenced to death for multiple counts of infanticide. Weeks later, she was beheaded in a beach square.

The baby had already changed wet nurses three times during this period. None of them were willing to adopt him long-term. It is said that this was because...

He ate too much, suckling the milk of two people, thus depriving the other babies of their milk.

The mother's means of livelihood, because there is no profit for a wet nurse from feeding just one baby. The supervising police officer, a man named La...

The man from Fors, fed up with the situation, planned to have the child sent to the abandoned children and orphans on Rue Saint-Antoine.

The orphanage; from there, a group of children were transferred daily to the National Orphanage in Rouen. But at that time...

The transport was all done by porters using baskets woven from tough leather. To improve efficiency, each basket could hold up to [number missing] people at a time.

Four infants; therefore, the mortality rate during transport was particularly high. For this reason, the carriers of the baskets were instructed to only...

They can transport baptized infants, but these infants must have a proper transport permit stamped in Rouen. Due to Gray...

The baby Noye was neither baptized nor did he have two proper names to fill in on the transport document; moreover, the police...

The police department does not allow a nameless child to be abandoned at the door of a shelter—doing so would completely destroy the system.

All other procedures become redundant, meaning that due to the series of administrative and technical issues that may arise from transporting children...

Faced with difficulties and due to time constraints, Officer Lafus had to abandon his original plan and take the baby boy away.

They handed it over to a church organization in exchange for a receipt, so that they could baptize the child there and...

His future fate was decided. So they entrusted him to the Saint-Méri Abbey on Via Saint-Martin. There he lived...

He was baptized and named Jean-Baptiste. This was because the abbot was in a particularly good mood that day, and his charitable foundation...

The money hadn't run out, so the child wasn't sent to Rouen; instead, the monastery paid for someone to raise him. Thus, he was...

It was given to a wet nurse named Jeanne Bissiere who lived on Rue Saint-Denis, for whom she received three francs a week.

remuneration.

A few weeks later, the wet nurse, Jeanne Bissiere, stood at the entrance of the Saint-Mérieux Convent, carrying a basket, to give...

The elder Thalie, who opened the door—a bald monk of about fifty years old with a slightly sour smell—said...

"Look at this!" he said, and then placed the basket on the threshold.

“What is this?” Thalie asked, bending over the basket and sniffing it, for he guessed…

This is something you can eat.

"The illegitimate child of the woman who murdered infants on Fell Street!"

The elder reached his fingers into the basket and poked around until the sleeping baby's face was visible.

"His complexion is so beautiful. It's rosy and he looks so well-nourished!"

"Because he sucked all my milk out. Because he drained me like a pump, leaving only bones."

Head. But now you can stop. You can continue feeding yourselves with goat's milk, porridge, and carrot juice. This

Mongrel eats everything.

Elder Thalie was a kind man. He was in charge of managing the monastery's charitable fund, responsible for distributing the money to the poor.

People and those in urgent need. He expects people to thank him and not bother him in any other way. He is meticulous about technical details.

He finds small things very distasteful because they imply difficulties, and difficulties mean disruption to his peace of mind.

There was something he absolutely couldn't tolerate. He was even annoyed by opening the door himself. He wanted the visitor to take the basket home.

Don't bother him with this baby stuff anymore. He slowly straightened up, taking in the milky smell emanating from the wet nurse.