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Grenouille did it And for the first time Baldini was able to follow and document the individual maneuvers of this wizard Paper and pen in hand, constantly urging a slower pace, he sat next to Grenouille and jotted do many drams of this, how redient wandered into thebottles This was a curious after-the-facta procedure; it eht to have totally precluded the procedure to begin with But by eed to obtain such synthetic formulas Hoas that Grenouille could mix his perfumes without the formulas was still a puzzle, or better, a miracle, to Baldini, but at least he had captured thisin part his thirst for rules and order and preventing the total collapse of his perfumer’s universe

In due time he ferreted out the recipes for all the perfumes Grenouille had thus far invented, and finally he forbade him to create new scents unless he, Baldini, was present with pen and paper to observe the process with Argus eyes and to document it step by step In his fastidious, prickly hand, he copied his notes, soon consisting of dozens of formulas, into two different little books—one he locked in his fireproof safe and the other he always carried with hiht That reassured him For now, should he wish, he could himself perform Grenouille’s miracles, which had on first encounter so profoundly shaken hi these written for froerstupidly, but was able to participate in the creative process by observing and recording it, had a soothing effect on Baldini and strengthened his self-confidence After a while he even canificant contribution to the success of these sublime scents And when he had once entered them in his little books and entrusted theer doubted that they were now his and his alone

But Grenouille, too, profited from the disciplined procedures Baldini had forced upon him He was not dependent on them himself He never had to look up an old formula to reconstruct a perfuot an odor But by using the obligatory e of perfue of this language could be of service to him After a feeeks Grenouille had mastered not only the names of all the odors in Baldini’s laboratory, but he was also able to record the formulas for his perfumes on his own and, vice versa, to convert other people’s formulas and instructions into perfumes and other scented products And not rant ideas in drops and draer even needed the interned hine, a sachet, or a face paint, Grenouille no longer reached for flacons and powders, but instead simply sat hiht out He had learned to extend the journey from his mental notion of a scent to the finished perfu down the formula For him it was a detour In the world’s eyes—that is, in Baldini’s—it was progress Grenouille’s miracles re with them removed the terror, and that was for the best The more Grenouille mastered the tricks and tools of the trade, the better he was able to express hie of perfumery—and the less hishiifts, Baldini no longer considered hiipani or, worse, soulations of the craft functioned as a welcouise He virtually lulled Baldini to sleep with his exe bottles, sprinkling the test handkerchief He could shake it out alantly as his master And from time to time, at well-spaced intervals, he would make etting to filter, setting the scales wrong, fixing the percentage of ah And took his scoldings for thetheed to lull Baldini into the illusion that ultimately this was all perfectly normal He was not out to cheat the old man after all He truly wanted to learn from him Not how to mix perfumes, not how to compose a scent correctly, not that of course! In that sphere, there was no one in the world who could have taught hiredients available in Baldini’s shop have even begun to suffice for his notions about how to realize a truly great perfus compared with those he carried within him and that he intended to create one day But for that, he kneo indispensable prerequisites must be met The first was the cloak of middle-class respectability, the status of a journeyman at the least, under the protection of which he could indulge his true passions and follow his true goals unie of the craft itself, the way in which scents were produced, isolated, concentrated, preserved, and thus first her ends For Grenouille did indeed possess the best nose in the world, both analytical and visionary, but he did not yet have the ability to make those scents realities

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And so he gladly let hi soap fro powders from wheat flour and almond bran and pulverized violet roots Rolled scented candles made of charcoal, saltpeter, and sandalwood chips Pressed Oriental pastilles of myrrh, benzoin, and powdered amber Kneaded frankincense, shellac, vetiver, and cinnamon into balls of incense Sifted and spatulated poudre impériale out of crushed rose petals, lavender flowers, cascarilla bark Stirred face paints, whites and vein blues, and reasy sticks of carernail dusts and s and wart drops for corns, bleaches to rehtshade extract for the eyes, Spanish fly for the gentlears for the ladies… Grenouille learned to produce all such eaux and powders, toilet and beauty preparations, plus teas and herbal blends, liqueurs, marinades, and such—in short, he learned, with no particular interest but without co that Baldini knew to teach hireat store of traditional lore

He was an especially eager pupil, however, whenever Baldini instructed him in the production of tinctures, extracts, and essences He was indefatigable when it ca bitter al dollops of gray, greasy aesting the shavings in the finest alcohol He learned how to use a separatory funnel that could draw off the purest oil of crushed les He learned to dry herbs and flowers on grates placed in ware in wax-sealed crocks and caskets He learned the art of rinsing po, and rectifying infusions

To be sure, Baldini’s laboratory was not a proper place for fabricating floral or herbal oils on a grand scale It would have been hard to find sufficient quantities of fresh plants in Paris for that But froe, mint, or anise seeds at the s, or dried clove blossoms had come in, then the alchee ale vessel, atop it a head for condensing liquids—a so-called moor’s head alembic, 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 Lubéron And while Grenouille chopped up as to be distilled, Baldini hectically bustled about heating a brick-lined hearth—because speed was the alpha and oa

of this procedure—and placed on it a copper kettle, the bottom well covered ater He threw in the minced plants, quickly closed off the double-walled moor’s head, and connected two hoses to alloater to pass in and out This cleverhe had added on later, since out in the field, of course, one had si And then he blew on the fire

Slowly the kettle came to a boil And after a while, the distillate started to flow out of the moor’s head’s third tap into a Florentine flask that Baldini had set below it—at first hesitantly, drop by drop, then in a threadlike streain with, like some thin, murky soup Bit by bit, 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, the floral or herbal fluid; above, a thick floating layer of oil If one carefully poured off the fluid—which had only the lightest aroh the lower spout of the Florentine flask, the pure oil was left behind—the essence, the heavily scented principle of the plant

Grenouille was fascinated by the process If ever anything in his life had kindled his enthusiasranted, not a visible enthusias with a cold fla fire, water, stea apparatus to snatch the scented soul from matter That scented soul, that ethereal oil, was in fact the best thing about matter, the only reason for his interest in it The rest of the stupid stuff—the blossoms, leaves, rind, fruit, color, beauty, vitality, and all those other useless qualities—were of no concern to him They were mere husk and ballast, to be disposed of

Froroatery and clear, they took the alembic from the fire, opened it, and shook out the cooked y straw, like the bleached bones of little birds, like vegetables that had been boiled too long, insipid and stringy, pulpy, hardly still recognizable for what it was, disgustingly cadaverous, and almost totally robbed of its own odor They threw it out theinto the river Then they fed the alembic with new, fresh plants, poured in ain the kettle began to siain the lifeblood of the plants dripped into the Florentine flask This often went on all night long Baldini watched the hearth, Grenouille kept an eye on the flasks; there was nothing else to do while waiting for the next batch

They sat on footstools by the fire, under the spell of the rotund flacon—both spellbound, if for very different reasons Baldini enjoyed the blaze of the fire and the flickering red of the fla wood, the gurgle of the alembic, for it was like the old days You could lose yourself in it! He fetched a bottle of wine fro as like the old days too And then he began to tell stories, from the old days, endless stories About the War of the Spanish Succession, when his own participation against the Austrians had had a decisive influence on the outcoether houenot in the Esterel, who, intoxicated by the scent of lavender, had complied with his wishes; about a forest fire that he had damn near started and which would then have probably set the entire Provence ablaze, as sure as there was a heaven and hell, for a biting ; and over and over he told about distilling out in the open fields, at night, by ht, accompanied by wine and the screech of cicadas, and about a lavender oil that he had created, one so refined and powerful that you could have weighed it out in silver; about his apprentice years in Genoa, about his journeyman years in the city of Grasse, where there were as many perfumers as shoenificent houses with shaded gardens and terraces and wainscoted dining rooolden cutlery, and so on…