1756

The year 1756 is the hinge on which Jean-Baptiste Grenouille's life swings from servitude to solitude, from the crowded stench of Paris to the absolute olfactory emptiness of a volcanic peak in the Auvergne. It is the year he receives his journeyman's papers from Giuseppe Baldini, leaves the capital forever under oath, and, within days, watches from the road as the bridge that held Baldini's shop collapses into the Seine. More than a calendar date, 1756 is the threshold between Grenouille's long apprenticeship in the world of men and his seven-year hibernation inside the Plomb du Cantal, where he will attempt to live without any human odour at all.

Departure from Paris and the Collapse of Baldini's House

Early in 1756, Baldini, now Europe's greatest perfumer and one of the richest citizens of Paris, finally releases Grenouille under three conditions: he must never produce any of Baldini's perfumes, must leave Paris for as long as Baldini lives, and must keep these terms secret. Grenouille, who cares nothing for honour or oaths, swears without hesitation and sets out one May morning with a rucksack, a second shirt, two pairs of stockings, a large sausage, a horse blanket, and twenty-five francs. Baldini watches him shuffle across the Pont au Change toward the Île de la Cité and feels extraordinarily relieved. That same afternoon, a rumour reaches Paris that England has declared war on France; Baldini postpones his planned pilgrimage to Notre-Dame to cancel a shipment to London. That night, the west side of the Pont au Change collapses between the third and fourth piers, hurling two buildings into the river. Baldini and his wife Teresa are killed instantly. Nothing is recovered—not the bodies, not the safe, not the little book of six hundred formulas that Baldini had carried next to his heart. Only a motley odour of musk, cinnamon, vinegar, lavender, and a thousand other things floats above the Seine from Paris to Le Havre for weeks.

The Journey South and the Discovery of Solitude

By the time Baldini's house falls, Grenouille is already on the road to Orléans. For the first time in his life, he breathes air that is not saturated with human effluvium. The further he gets from Paris, the better he feels; he even manages sporadically to carry himself erect, looking from a distance like an ordinary itinerant journeyman. He avoids Orléans, circles it in a giant arc, crosses the Loire at Sully, and pushes into the interior. He avoids not just cities but villages, then farms, then even shepherds and herds of sheep. Finally he travels only by night, sleeping during the day rolled up in his horse blanket under bushes, his nose wedged in the crook of an elbow. He heads south not by compass but by the compass of his nose, which sends him skirting every human settlement. His sensitivity to human odour grows so acute that the smell of a charcoal burner's cottage from miles away drives him further into the wilderness.

Arrival at the Plomb du Cantal

In August 1756, after weeks of wandering, Grenouille reaches the Plomb du Cantal, a six-thousand-foot-high volcano in the Massif Central of the Auvergne. The mountain is a giant cone of blue-grey rock surrounded by an endless, barren highland studded with a few trees charred by fire and overgrown with grey moss and grey brush. For miles around, not one human being lives. No one has scaled the peak for decades. As dawn breaks, Grenouille stands on the summit and turns full circle, letting his nose move across the vast panorama. In every direction, humanity lies equally remote. The compass spins about; it no longer provides orientation. He is at his goal. He spends the whole day standing in the blazing heat, waiting for the slightest evidence of human presence—a roof, smoke, a dog's bark, a child's cry. Nothing comes. As the sun sets, his mistrust fades before an ever-increasing sense of euphoria. He erupts with thundering jubilation, casts aside his rucksack, blanket, and walking stick, stamps his feet on the ground, throws his arms to the sky, dances in circles, and roars his own name to the four winds. He has escaped the abhorrent taint. He is truly completely alone.

The Cave and the Beginning of Seven Years

Near the summit, Grenouille discovers a natural tunnel leading a hundred feet into the mountain, ending in a rock slide so narrow that his shoulders touch the rock and so low that he can only walk hunched down. He smells at once that no living creature has ever entered the place. He spreads his horse blanket on the ground as if dressing an altar and lies down. He is lying a hundred and fifty feet below the earth, inside the loneliest mountain in France, as if in his own grave. Never in his life has he felt so secure, certainly not in his mother's belly. He begins to cry softly. In the days that follow, he goes into the open only to lick water from a crevasse, to relieve himself, and to hunt lizards and snakes. He climbs back to the peak a few times during the first weeks to sniff the horizon, but soon gives up even that. For well over twenty hours a day, in total darkness and total silence and total immobility, he sits on his horse blanket at the end of the stony corridor and enjoys himself. He basks in his own existence and finds it splendid. This life will continue for seven years, until a catastrophic dream about his own odourlessness drives him back into the world.