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He could do all that, if only he wanted to He possessed the power He held it in his hand A power stronger than the power of money or the power of terror or the power of death: the invincible power to co that power could not do: it could not ht allow hiod—if he could not smell himself and thus never knoho he was, to hell with it, with the world, with himself, with his perfume

The hand that had grasped the flacon was fragrant with a faint scent, and when he put it to his nose and sniffed, he greistful and forgot to walk on and stood there sood this perfuht No one knoell made it is Other people are merely conquered by its effect, don’t even know that it’s a perfu thenized it for its true beauty is me, because I created it myself And at the same time, I’m the only one that it cannot enslave I aless

And on another occasion—he was already in Burgundy: When I was standing there at the wall below the garden where the redheaded girl was playing and her scent ca down to me … or, better, the promise of her scent, for the scent she would carry later did not even exist yet—maybe what I felt that day is like what the people on the parade grounds felt when I flooded theht aside: No, it was so else Because I knew that I desired the scent, not the girl But those people believed that they desired me, and what they really desired remained a mystery to them

Then he thought nopoint, and then, too, he was already in the Orléanais

He crossed the Loire at Sully The next day he had the odor of Paris in his nose On June 25, 1766, at six in the , he entered the city via the rue Saint-Jacques

It turned out to be a hot day, the hottest of the year thus far The thousands of odors and stenches oozed out as if froetables in the market stalls shriveled up Meat and fish rotted Tainted air hung in the narrow streets Even the river seenated It stank It was a day like the one on which Grenouille was born

He walked across the Pont-Neuf to the right bank, and then down to Les Halles and the Cimetière des Innocents He sat down in the arcades of the charnel house bordering the rue aux Fers Before hirounds like a cratered battlefield, burrowed and ditched and trenched with graves, soith skulls and bones, not a tree, bush, or blade of grass, a garbage dump of death

Not a soul was to be seen The stench of corpses was so heavy that even the gravediggers had retreated Only after the sun had gone down did they coht until late into the night

But then after ers had left by then—the place came alive with all sorts of riffraff: thieves,desperadoes A s the stench

When Grenouille came out of the arcades and mixed in with these people, they at first took no notice of hied, as if he were one of them That later helped confirhost or an angel or so Because norer

The little man in the blue frock coat, however, had suddenly siround, and he had had a little bottle in his hand that he unstoppered That was the first thing that any of them could recall: that he had stood there and unstoppered a bottle And then he had sprinkled himself all over with the contents of the bottle and all at once he had been bathed in beauty like blazing fire

For a moment they fell back in awe and pure a back wasstart, that their aas turning to desire, their ael of aforce came from him, a riptide no human could have resisted, all the less because no human would have wanted to resist it, for what that tide was pulling under and dragging aas the huht to him

They had formed a circle around hirew smaller and san to push, to shove, and to elbow, each of the to be closest to the center

And then all at once the last inhibition collapsed within theel, pounced on hiround Each of them wanted to touch hie, a spark from that wonderful fire They tore away his clothes, his hair, his skin from his body, they plucked him, they drove their claws and teeth into his flesh, they attacked him like hyenas

But the huh and not easily dis it And so the flash of knives soon followed, thrusting and slicing, and then the swish of axes and cleavers ai the bones In very short order, the angel was divided into thirty pieces, and every animal in the pack snatched a piece for itself, and then, driven by voluptuous lust, dropped back to devour it A half hour later, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille had disappeared utterly from the earth

When the cannibals found their way back together after disposing of their meal, no one said a word Soue, or kick a leftover shred of blue frock coat into the flames They were all a little embarrassed and afraid to look at one another They had all, whether man or woman, committed a murder or some other despicable cri? They would never, so they thought, have been capable of anything that horrible And they were amazed that it had been so very easy for them and that, embarrassed as they were, they did not feel the tiniest bite of conscience On the contrary! Though the meal lay rather heavy on their stoht All of a sudden there were delightful, bright flutterings in their dark souls And on their faces was a delicate, virginal glow of happiness Perhaps that hy they were shy about looking up and gazing into one another’s eyes

When they finally did dare it, at first with stolen glances and then candid ones, they had to smile They were unco out of love

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