perfume - Chapter 7
Soon, he had sniffed the entire area between St. Eustache and the City Hall, so closely that he...
Even in the pitch black of night, he wouldn't get lost. So he expanded his hunting grounds, initially extending westward to Saint Honoré.
The route then extends from the outskirts of the city, then from Avenue Saint-Antoine all the way to the Bastille, and finally even reaches the Sorbonne and Saint-Germain-des-Prés regions across the river.
On the outskirts of Erman, lived the wealthy. Passing through the iron gate at the entrance, the air was thick with the scent of carriage leather and the wigs of those who carried them.
The scents of face powder, dyewood, roses, and freshly pruned privet roses rose above the towering walls of the park.
It drifted in. Here, Grenouille smelled true perfume for the first time: the ordinary scent added to the garden fountain during a festival.
The fragrance is made with lavender and rose, and blended with neroli, tuberose, kalanchoe, jasmine, or cinnamon oils.
More complex and priceless fragrances, which every evening flow like a heavy ribbon from a magnificent carriage.
A scent wafted from behind. He noted these fragrances with curiosity, but not particularly appreciation, as if not noting down ordinary scents.
Scent. Although he noted that the intention of perfume was to intoxicate and attract people, he also recognized...
While the individual fragrance components that make up the aroma are of excellent quality, he believes that as a whole, they are crude and adulterated.
It wasn't synthetic. He knew that as long as he had the same basic ingredients, he could create completely different scents.
He had already seen many of the basic ingredients at the flower and spice stalls in the market; other basic ingredients...
He was new, these were filtered from the blend of fragrances, and he kept them in his memory without knowing their names.
They are styrax, civet, camphor, sandalwood, bergamot, vetiver, kraft myrrh, and benzoin.
Houttuynia cordata, beaver sage.
He made no choice. He didn't distinguish between what people usually call good or bad smells;
No. He was greedy. His hunting aim was to possess all the scents the world offered; his only goal was...
One standard is: these scents should be fresh. The scent of a sweating horse mingles with the delicate fragrance of a budding rose.
The green scent is of equal value; the pungent stench of a bedbug is no less than that emanating from a gentleman's kitchen.
The aroma of roasted veal stuffed with fatty strips filled the air. He devoured all the smells, inhaling them deeply.
In his fantastical, olfactory-synthesizing kitchen! New scents are constantly being synthesized here—before any aesthetic principles are even considered.
They were all strange scents; he created them, and then quickly destroyed them, like a child playing with building blocks.
It has many inventions, but also many destructive ones, and lacks clear creative principles.
September 1, 1753, was the anniversary of the king's accession to the throne, and the city of Paris set off fireworks at the Pont des Kings.
The fireworks display this time was not as spectacular as those held during the king's wedding or the birth of the heir to the French throne.
The fireworks were spectacular, and they still left a very deep impression. People attached a wheel, symbolizing the sun, to the boat.
On the mast alone, the so-called fire-breathing beast spewed raindrops of flame, twinkling like stars, into the river. Amidst the deafening roar...
Amidst the deafening noise, just as firecrackers were exploding everywhere and fireworks flashed above the cobblestone road, a rocket soared into the sky.
In the middle, white lilies were painted against the black sky. Thousands gathered on the bridge and at the docks on both sides of the river.
The crowd of tens of thousands erupted in jubilant cheers, even shouting "Long live the King!"—though the King was only three...
He ascended the throne eighteen years ago, and the height of his popularity has long passed, but the fireworks stirred their emotions.
Grenouille stood silently on the right bank of the river, in the shadow of the "Plant Pavilion" opposite Wangjia Bridge. He did not use his hands.
He applauded, but he never looked in that direction when the rocket launched. He came here because he thought he could catch a whiff of something new.
But as it turned out, the fireworks didn't provide any valuable smells. There were crackling and popping sounds and explosions.
The various things that emitted shimmering light left behind, at best, a monotonous smell of sulfur, oil, and saltpeter.
He was about to leave this tedious celebration and walk home along the Louvre galleries when a gust of wind blew something towards him.
He blew, and it was something tiny, almost imperceptible, a fragment, a fragrance...
A little, no, even less: it's a premonition of a scent, not an actual scent—but it's a premonition of something never before experienced.
A reliable premonition based on the scent he'd smelled before. He retreated back to the wall, closed his eyes, and flared his nostrils. The fragrance was extremely subtle.
It was too tender, so he couldn't control it; it repeatedly broke free from his sense of smell, masked by the gunpowder smoke of the firecrackers.
The odors emanating from the crowd were blocked, and disrupted by the city's thousands of other smells. But then, in an instant, it...
Here it comes again, just a faint, wonderful scent, appearing for a mere second… then vanishing in an instant.
Renoir was in great pain. This was not only the first time his greedy nature had been insulted, but it also caused him great distress.
He had a peculiar premonition: this fragrance held the key to understanding the secrets of all other fragrances; if he didn't...
To understand this fragrance is to know nothing about all fragrances; if he cannot successfully possess this fragrance, then he...
Grenouille, he's lived a wasted life. He must possess it, not merely for possession, but to make it his...
My heart is at peace.
He was extremely agitated and in a foul mood. He still hadn't figured out where the fragrance was coming from. Sometimes, in the re-
Before even a faint fragrance wafted towards him, the intervals could last for several minutes. Each time, fear would assail him, and he was terrified.
He feared losing that fragrance forever. Finally, in his despair, he was saved: the fragrance came from the other side of the river, from the east...
Somewhere in the south.
He left the walls of the "Plant Pavilion," squeezed into the crowd, and cleared a path for himself to cross the bridge. Every few steps...
He stopped in his tracks, tiptoed, and tried to sniff over people's heads, initially too excited to see anything.
He smelled it, and finally he caught a whiff of something—the fragrance, even stronger than before. His goal was clear.
Disappearing again into the crowd, I continued to push my way through the throngs of onlookers and fireworks enthusiasts, the fireworks people constantly...
They all lit the rocket fuses with torches. Grenouille, unaware of the acrid smell of gunpowder smoke, panicked.
Lost and confused, he continued to charge and clear the way. He didn't know how many minutes passed before he finally reached the other side, arriving at the Ma Yi Building.
Marac Quay, at the intersection of Boulevard de la Seine.
He stopped there, focused, and sniffed. He smelled it, and he grasped it firmly. The scent was like a ribbon.
The child was dragged down from the Seine, very clear, yet still very tender, very fine. Grenouille felt his...
His heart was pounding, he knew it. It wasn't from exhaustion, but from his helplessness in the face of this smell.
Because of his strength, he tried to recall certain comparable scents, but had to discard all comparisons. This time...
The scent is refreshing, but not the sweet lemon or sour lemon scent, nor does it come from myrrh, cinnamon leaf, or wrinkled leaves.
The fresh scent of mint, twigs, camphor, or pine needles is not the coolness of rainwater, cold wind, or spring water.
The scent... and it has a warming quality; but it's not like bergamot, cypress, or house fragrance, nor like jasmine or daffodil.
Unlike rosewood, or butterfly wood… this scent is a mixture of both, namely, the volatile and the lingering parts.
No, not a mixture, but a unity, few and weak, yet strong and solid, like a shimmering thin sheet of paper.
Silk…and smoke isn’t like silk, but rather like milk sweet as honey, with biscuits melted in it—but in any case…
Milk and silk—how can they be connected?! This smell is incomprehensible, indescribable, and unclassifiable.
It may not even exist. Yet it undeniably exists. Grenouille, with a trembling heart, followed it.
Because he sensed that he wasn't following the scent, but rather that it had already captured him and was now drawing him closer.
Mop the floor vigorously.
He walked up the Seine. The streets were deserted. The houses stood empty and silent.
The sound. Everyone here went down to the riverbank to watch the fireworks. There was no unpleasant smell or pungent gunpowder odor here.
Disturbance. The streets reeked of the usual stench of water, excrement, rats, and rotten vegetables. But floating above them was the bow-drawing spirit, Grenouille.
That soft yet clear ribbon of light. After only a few steps, the sparse twilight was swallowed up by the towering houses.
Grenouille continued walking in the darkness. He didn't need to see anything. The scent led him without fail.
After walking fifty meters, Grenouille turned right onto Rue Maré, a street that was perhaps even darker and barely longer.
The alley was only as wide as an arm's length. Surprisingly, the smell wasn't necessarily much stronger, just purer.
And as it becomes purer, its allure grows stronger. Grenouille walked on, unable to control himself, in a...
In that place, the smell suddenly jolted him! To the right, it seemed to lead him into the middle of a house wall, a...
A low-ceilinged corridor came into view, leading to the backyard. Grenouille strolled through this corridor as if on a nighttime walk, passing through this...
Turn the corner in the backyard, and you'll reach a second, even smaller backyard. Here, finally, there are lights: the space is only a few steps square.
A wooden roof jutted out slanted from the wall. A candle burned on a table close to the wall below. A young girl sat at the table.
Beside her, someone was processing yellow plums. She took plums from a basket, placed them in her left hand, and used a knife to cut the stems and remove the pits.
Then he put them in the bucket. She was about thirteen or fourteen years old. Grenouille stopped. He immediately understood; he was far away.
What is the source of the fragrance that can be smelled from the other side of the river more than half a mile away? It is not this dirty backyard, nor the yellow plums.
The root of the problem is this girl.
For a moment, he was completely bewildered, to the point that he truly believed he had never seen anyone like this girl in his entire life.
Such a beautiful thing. But he only saw her back as she faced the candle. Of course, he meant that he had never smelled anything so beautiful.
A wonderful scent. Because he knew human scent, he couldn't believe that such a wonderful scent could come from a person.
It's emitted from the body. Normally, human odor is indescribable or very unpleasant. Children's skin has a faint, odorless smell.
Men smell of urine, sweat, and cheese; women smell of rancid grease and rotten fish. Human odor is rooted in…
It was meaningless, even annoying… Therefore, for the first time in his life, Grenouille couldn't believe his nose.
He had to rely on his eyes to determine what he was smelling. Of course, the sensory confusion didn't last long.
In fact, he figured it out visually in a split second, and then he used his sense of smell without any hesitation.
Observation. Now he could smell that she was a person; he could smell the sweat in her armpits, the grease in her hair, and the fishy smell of her lower body.
He inhaled with great interest the scent. Her sweat smelled fresh like a sea breeze, and the lipids in her hair were like...
Her skin was as sweet as walnut oil, as fragrant as a bunch of water lilies, and as sweet as apricot blossoms…all of it.