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Soet him into stride, he would allow himself a brief, odoriferous detour to Grimal’s for a whiff of the stench of raw, ined the collective effluvium of six hundred thousand Parisians in the sultry, oppressive heat of late summer

And then all at once, the pent-up hate would erupt with orgasmic force—that was, after all, the point of the exercise Like a thunderstorm he rolled across these odors that had dared offend his patrician nose He thrashed at therainfield; like a hurricane, he scattered the rabble and drowned thee of distilled water And how just was his anger How great his revenge Ah! What a sublime moment! Grenouille, the little man, quivered with exciteht and arched so high that he slaainst the roof of the tunnel, only to sink back slowly and lie there lolling in satiation It really was too pleasant, this volcanic act that extinguished all obnoxious odors, really too pleasant… This was almost his favorite routine in the whole repertoire of his innermost universal theater, for it ihteous exhaustion that corand heroic deeds

Now he could rest awhile in good conscience He stretched out—to the extent his body fit within the narrow stony quarters Deep inside, however, on the cleanly swept mats of his soul, he stretched out co delicate scents play about his nose: a spicy gust, for instance, as if borne here froh the first green leaves of beech; a sea breeze, with the bitterness of salted al like late afternoon, for naturally there was no afternoon or forenoon or evening or ht nor darkness, nor were there spring s at all in Grenouille’s inners (Which is why the façon de parler speaks of that universe as a landscape; an adequate expression, to be sure, but the only possible one, since our language is of no use when it co the smellable world) It was, then, late afternoon: that is, a condition and a ns over the south when the siesta is done and the paralysis of ain after such constraint The heat kindled by rage—the enemy of sublime scents—had fled, the pack of demons was annihilated The fields within him lay soft and burnished beneath the lascivious peace of his awakening—and they waited for the will of their lord to come upon them

And Grenouille rose up—as noted—and shook the sleep froreat innerlory and grandeur, splendid to look upon—damn shame that no one saw him!—and looked about him, proud and majestic

Yes! This was his empire! The incomparable Empire of Grenouille! Created and ruled over by him, the incomparable Grenouille, laid waste by hiain, ainst every intruder Here there was naught but his will, the will of the great, spendid, incomparable Grenouille And now that the evil stench of the past had been swept away, he desired that his ehty strides he passed across the fallow fields and sowed fragrance of all kinds, wastefully here, sparingly there, in plantations of endless di seeds by the fistful or tucking theions of his eardener, hurried, and soon there was not a cranny left into which he had not thrown a seed of fragrance

And when he saw that it was good and that the whole earth was saturated with his divine Grenouille seeds, then Grenouille the Great let descend a shower of rectified spirit, soft and steady, and everywhere and overall the seed began to gerladden his heart On the plantations it rolled in luxurious waves, and in the hidden gardens the stems stood full with sap The blossoms all but exploded from their buds

Then Grenouille the Great coentle sun of his smile upon the land; whereupon, to a bud, the hosts of blossolory, frole rainbowed carpet woven frorance And Grenouille the Great saw that it was good, very, very good And he caused the wind of his breath to blow across the land And the blossoled their tee scent that in all its variety was nevertheless e to Hinificent, who, enthroned upon his gold-scented cloud, sniffed his breath back in again, and the sweet savor of the sacrifice was pleasing unto hined to bless his creation several tis of praise and rejoicing and yet further outpourings of glorious fragrance Meanwhile evening was come, and the scents spilled over still and united with the blue of night to forala of scent awaited, with one gigantic burst of fragrant diamond-studded fireworks

Grenouille the Great, however, had tired a little and yawned and spoke: “Behold, I have done a great thing, and I am well pleased But as with all the works once finished, it begins to bore me I shall withdraw, and to crown this strenuous day I shall allow myself yet one more small delectation in the chambers of my heart”

So spoke Grenouille the Great and, while the peasantry of scent danced and celebrated beneath hiolden clouds, across the nocturnal fields of his soul, and home to his heart

27

Ah, returning hoer and creator of worlds was not a little taxing, and then to be celebrated afterwards for hours on end by one’s own offspring was not the perfect way to relax either Weary of the duties of divine creator and official host, Grenouille the Great longed for some small domestic bliss

His heart was a purple castle It lay in a rock-strewn desert, concealed by dunes, surrounded by a marshy oasis, and set behind stone walls It could be reached only from the air It had a thousand private rooant salons, aer Grenouille the Great, but only the quite private Grenouille, or simply dear little Jean-Baptiste—would recover from the labors of the day

The castle’s private roo, and on those shelves were all the odors that Grenouille had collected in the course of his life, several million of them And in the castle’s cellars the best scents of his life were stored in casks When properly aged, they were drawn off into bottles that lay in e and estate There were so le lifetime

Once dear little Jean-Baptiste had finally returned chez soi, lying on his simple, cozy sofa in his purple salon—his boots finally pulled off, so to speak—he clapped his hands and called his servants, ere invisible, intangible, inaudible, and above all inodorous, and thus totally io to the private rooreat library of odors and to the cellars to fetch soinary servants hurried off, and Grenouille’s stomach cramped in tormented expectation He suddenly felt like a drunkard who is afraid that the shot of brandy he has ordered at the bar will, for some reason or other, be denied him What if the cellar or the library were suddenly eone sour? Why were they keeping hi? Why did they not come? He needed the stuff now, he needed it desperately, he was addicted, he would die on the spot if he did not get it

Calm yourself, Jean-Baptiste! Cal, they

’re bringing what you crave The servants are winging their way here with it They are carrying the book of odors on an invisible tray, and in their white-gloved, invisible hands they are carrying those precious bottles, they set them down, ever so carefully, they bow, and they disappear

And then, left alone, at last—once again!—left alone, Jean-Baptiste reaches for the odors he craves, opens the first bottle, pours a glass full to the rilass of cool scent down in one draft, and it is luscious It is so refreshingly good that dear Jean-Baptiste’s eyes fill with tears of bliss, and he ilass: a scent fro, before sunrise on the Pont-Royal, his nose directed to the west, froht breeze bore the blended odors of sea and forest and a touch of the tarry ses tied up at the bank It was the scent fro about Paris without Gri day, of the first daybreak that he had ever known in freedoe of freedoe of a different life The odor of that uarded it carefully And he drank of it daily

Once he had elass, all his nervousness, all his doubt and insecurity, fell away frolorious contentainst the soft cushions of his sofa, opened a book, and began to read from his memoirs He read about the odors of his childhood, of his schooldays, about the odors of the broad streets and hidden nooks of the city, about human odors And a pleasant shudder washed over him, for the odors he now called up were indeed those that he despised, that he had exterminated With sickened interest, Grenouille read frohed his interest, he simply slammed the book shut, laid it aside, and picked up another

All the while he drank without pause from his noble scents After the bottle of hope, he uncorked one from the year 1744, filled with the warm scent of the wood outside Madame Gaillard’s house And after that he drank a bottle of the scent of a suleaned froe of a park in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, dated 1753

He was now scent-logged His arrew heavier and heavier as they pressed into the cushions His ed But it was not yet the end of his debauch His eyes could read nosince fallen fro without having emptied one last bottle, the irl from the rue des Marais…