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“That’s not what Ithe basket away “I don’t h But it’s the bastard himself, he doesn’t smell”

“Because he’s healthy,” Terrier cried, “because he’s healthy, that’s why he doesn’t smell! Only sick babies smell, everyone knows that It’s well known that a child with the pox smells like horse manure, and one with scarlet fever like old apples, and a consumptive child s with him Do you think he should stink? Do your own children stink?”

“No,” said the wet nurse “My children sht to smell”

Terrier carefully placed the basket back on the ground, for he could sense rising within hier at this obstinate female It was possible that he would need to ressed, and he didn’t want the infant to be harmed in the process But for the present, he knotted his hands behind his back, shoved his tapering belly toward the wet nurse, and asked sharply, “You maintain, then, that you kno a human child—which may I remind you, once it is baptized, is also a child of God—is supposed to smell?”

“Yes,” said the wet nurse

“And you further maintain that, if it does not smell the way you—you, the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie froht to smell, it is therefore a child of the devil?”

He swung his left hand out froly held the question ht it over She was not happy that the conversation had all at once turned into a theological cross-examination, in which she could only be the loser

“That’s not what I meant to say,” she answered evasively “You priests will have to decide whether all this has anything to do with the devil or not, Father Terrier That’s not for such as : this baby makes ht to smell”

“Aha,” said Terrier with satisfaction, letting his arain “You retract all that about the devil, do you? Good But now be so kind as to tell me: what does a baby sht to smell? Well?”

“He sood,” said the wet nurse

“What do you s sood Stew ood But what does a baby smell like, is what I want to know”

The wet nurse hesitated She knew very well how babies smell, she knew precisely—after all she had fed, tended, cradled, and kissed dozens of theht at that moment she bore that baby smell clearly in her nose But never until now had she described it in words

“Well?” barked Terrier, clicking his fingernails impatiently

“Well it’s—” the wet nurse began, “it’s not all that easy to say, because … because they don’t sood all over, Father, you knohat I mean? Their feet, for instance, they smell like a smooth, warm stone—or no, more like curds … or like butter, like fresh butter, that’s it exactly They sriddle cake that’s been soaked in milk And their heads, up on top, at the back of the head, where the hair makes a cowlick, there, see where Ileft…” And she tapped the bald spot on the head of the monk, who, struck speechless for a moment by this flood of detailed inanity, had obediently bent his head down “There, right there, is where they smell best of all It smells like caramel, it smells so sweet, so wonderful, Father, you have no idea! Once you’ve smelled them there, you love them whether they’re your own or somebody else’s And that’s how little children have to smell—and no other way And if they don’t smell like that, if they don’t have any smell at all up there, even less than cold air does, like that little bastard there, then … You can explain it however you like, Father, but I”—and she crossed her arust toward the basket at her feet as if it contained toads—“I, Jeanne Bussie, will not take that thing back!”

Father Terrier slowly raised his lowered head and ran his fingers across his bald head a few tier beneath his nose as if by accident, and sniffed thoughtfully

“Like caraain “Caramel! What do you know about caramel? Have you ever eaten any?”

“Not exactly,” said the wet nurse “But once I was in a grand mansion in the rue Saint-Honoré and watched how they ood that I’ve never forgotten it”

“Yes, yes All right,” said Terrier and took his finger froue now! I find it quite exhausting to continue a conversation with you on such a level I have determined that, for whatever reason, you refuse to nourish any longer the babe put under your care, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, and are returning hiuardian, the cloister of Saint-Merri I find that distressing, but I apparently cannot alter the fact You are discharged”