Grenouille's relationship with the Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse

The relationship between Jean-Baptiste Grenouille and the Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse is a masterpiece of mutual deception, a brief but pivotal alliance in which each man uses the other to achieve his own ends. For the marquis, a crackpot nobleman who has retired from the court of Versailles to pursue a life of science, Grenouille is the ultimate experimental subject. For Grenouille, the marquis is a vehicle: a source of money, social legitimacy, and, most crucially, access to a perfumer's laboratory where he can create the one thing he lacks—a human scent. Their partnership, forged in the provincial town of Montpellier, is a grotesque comedy of errors that exposes the profound gullibility of the age and marks a decisive step in Grenouille's transformation from a despised monster into a being who can command love.

Discovery and the Theory of Fluidum Letale

Grenouille's emergence from seven years of solitary hibernation on the Plomb du Cantal is a shocking spectacle. When he stumbles into the town of Pierrefort, he is a feral creature: his hair reaches his knees, his beard hangs to his navel, his nails are like talons, and his skin is peeling off in shreds. The farmers who first see him run away screaming. The townspeople believe he is an escaped galley slave, a forest creature, or a member of a wild Indian tribe. Brought before the mayor, Grenouille produces his journeyman's papers and concocts a story of being kidnapped by robbers and held captive in a cave for seven years, fed by an invisible hand. This tale, more believable than the truth, is recorded and passed on to the local liege lord, the Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse, a member of parliament in Toulouse. The marquis, at forty, has turned his back on court life to dedicate himself to science. His grand theory posits that the earth itself emits a corrupting gas, a "Fluidum Letale," which lames vital energies and causes decay. All living things, he argues, strive to grow away from the earth to escape this lethal influence. When he hears of a man who has dwelt in a cave for seven years—completely encapsulated by the earth's corrupting element—he is beside himself with delight. He immediately has Grenouille brought to his laboratory for a thorough examination, finding his theories confirmed most graphically in the man's scars, club-foot, and hunchback.

The Scientific Demonstration and the "Cure"

The marquis, eager to present his find to an educated audience, rushes Grenouille to Montpellier in a carriage, forcing him to remain wrapped in earth-drenched rags and eat raw vegetable roots to preserve his contamination. Upon arrival, he locks Grenouille in a cellar and sends out invitations to every learned society in the city. A week later, Grenouille is presented as the scientific sensation of the year to a crowd of several hundred people at the University of Montpellier. In his lecture, Taillade-Espinasse strips Grenouille of his rags piece by piece, explaining the devastating effects of the "Fluidum Letale" on his body: pustules, scars, a giant red "gas cancer," and evidence of fluidal deformation of the bone structure. He pledges that within eight days, using his "vital ventilation machine" and a special diet, he will restore this doomed creature to health. The lecture is an immense success. The learned audience applauds vigorously, and many gentlemen tap Grenouille up and down in a professional manner. Grenouille, who feels perfectly healthy, plays his part perfectly, answering all questions with a strained death rattle and helpless gestures, as if his larynx has been rotted away by the fluidum. The marquis then locks him in his ventilation machine, a box made of pine boards with a suction flue extending above the roof, where he is fed a diet of dove bouillon, lark pie, and preserves of fruit picked from trees. After five days, Grenouille is bathed, waxed with nut-oil soap from Potosi, shaved, coiffed, and fitted out in a silk shirt, blue velvet frock coat, and buckled shoes. The marquis personally applies white talcum make-up to his scarred face, dabs his lips with crimson, and dusts him with a simple violet perfume. He then presents Grenouille to a mirror, declaring him a miracle of his own genius: "You were a beast, and I have made a man of you."

The Creation of the Human Scent and the Faked Seizure

For Grenouille, the transformation is a revelation. Looking into the mirror for the first time in his life, he sees a gentleman in a handsome blue outfit. He realizes that it is not the dove bouillon or the ventilation hocus-pocus that has made him appear normal, but solely the clothes, the haircut, and the little masquerade with cosmetics. He also knows that he still has no odour of his own. The marquis's violet perfume is a problem, and Grenouille devises a plan to replace it. The next day, as the marquis prepares to instruct him in the basic poses and dance steps for his social debut, Grenouille fakes a dramatic fainting spell, collapsing onto a sofa and thrashing about. He cries out that the violet perfume will kill him, explaining that as a perfumer with an occupationally sensitive nose, the scent of violet root extract, being of subterranean origin, has a pernicious effect on someone suffering from the "Fluidum Letale." The marquis, deeply impressed by this argument presented under the aegis of his own theory, is convinced. He orders all violet perfume removed from the house and has Grenouille conveyed in a sedan chair to the best perfumer in the city, a man named Runel. Locked in Runel's laboratory, Grenouille does not create the light, airy fragrance he promised the marquis. Instead, he creates a strange perfume that has never before existed on earth: a scent that does not smell like a scent, but like a human being who gives off scent. To imitate this basic human odour, he gathers a ghastly collection of ingredients: a half-teaspoon of fresh cat-shit, a thumbnail-sized piece of decomposing cheese, rancid fishy residue from a sardine tub, rotten egg, castoreum, ammonia, nutmeg, horn shavings, and singed pork rind. He mixes this revolting base with fresh, oily scents like peppermint and lavender, then disguises and tames it with fine floral oils of geranium, rose, orange blossom, and jasmine. The result is a perfume that, when smelled in a dark room, would make one believe a second person was standing there. He douses himself with this concoction and leaves the laboratory.

The Triumph and the Aftermath

Stepping onto the street, Grenouille is afraid, knowing that for the first time in his life he is giving off a human odour. He finds that he stinks, but as he walks through the back streets of Montpellier, he witnesses a miracle: people take notice of him. A woman at a well raises her head to see who is there. A man turns around and gazes after him with curiosity. Children scoot aside to make room for him. He grows bolder, jostling a passer-by, who accepts his apology and even claps him on the shoulder. He then goes to the square before the Cathedral of Saint-Pierre, where a wedding has just ended, and mingles with the dense crowd. In the thick of the crush, he spreads his arms and legs, opening his collar so that his odour can flow unimpeded. His joy is boundless when he notices that the others notice nothing, that they inhale his concoction of cat-shit, cheese, and vinegar as an odour just like their own and accept him as a human being among human beings. He lifts a little girl onto his arm, and the mother thanks him. He stands there, a strange child pressed to his chest, and breaks out in a black jubilation, a wicked feeling of triumph. He knows now that he can do much more: he can create a scent that is not merely human, but superhuman, an angel's scent that will make people love him to the point of insanity. The marquis, thrilled with the new perfume, anoints himself with it and feels revitalized. He presents Grenouille to the university a second time, and the change is so egregious that the crowd is silenced. Grenouille watches with great satisfaction as his scent captures the spectators, altering their facial expressions and emotions. The entire assemblage rises to its feet in frenetic cheering for the marquis, but Grenouille knows that the ovations are in reality meant for him. He stays on in Montpellier for several weeks, gaining a certain fame and learning to lie with practised routine. Then, one morning in March, he packs his things and leaves secretly, without his perfume, so that no one recognizes him. The marquis, privately dreadfully annoyed, later spreads the word that Grenouille has left to look after family matters. The marquis's own fame, however, continues to grow, and he eventually founds the first "Lodge of the Vital Fluidum" before embarking on a fatal expedition to the Pic du Canigou, where he disappears into a blizzard, never to return. His teachings, however, suffer no damage, and the legend of his fluidal theory persists for centuries.