Mass orgy at the execution

The mass orgy at the execution of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille represents the novel's most radical inversion of justice and human nature. Scheduled for 5 p.m. on 15 April 1766 on the parade grounds before the gates of Grasse, the event was meant to be the culmination of a year-long terror: Grenouille, convicted of murdering twenty-five virgins, was to be bound to a St Andrew's cross and dealt twelve blows with an iron rod, breaking the joints of his arms, legs, hips and shoulders, then left to hang until death. Instead, the execution degenerated into the largest orgy the world had seen since the second century before Christ, as the crowd of ten thousand was overwhelmed by the power of Grenouille's perfume.

The Crowd's Transformation

From the moment Grenouille stepped out of the police lieutenant's carriage—dressed in a blue frock coat, white shirt, silk stockings and buckled black shoes, unbound and unescorted—the assembled multitude was seized by an unshakeable belief that he could not possibly be a murderer. The ten thousand people on the parade grounds and the surrounding slopes, who had eagerly awaited his slaughter only minutes before, were infused with a powerful sense of goodwill, tenderness, and crazy, childish infatuation. They loved him. The executioner Papon, clutching his iron rod, trembled and grew weak as a child, unable to lift the weapon against this little, innocent man. The footman beside Grenouille sank to his knees and then to full prostration, quivering with subservience. The police lieutenant and the officer of the guard wept, cast themselves to the ground, fell into each other's arms, and flapped their arms absurdly in the air.

The Orgiastic Frenzy

The noble personages in the grandstand abandoned themselves to their emotions with hardly more discretion. Women thrust their fists into their laps and sighed with bliss, or fainted dead away from burning desire. Gentlemen sprang up and sat down, snorting and grasping their sword hilts. The bishop himself slumped forward, banging his forehead against his knees, basking in religious rapture at what he took to be a divine miracle. Beyond the barricade, the common people gave themselves over ever more shamelessly to the uncanny rush of emotion. Respectable women ripped open their blouses, bared their breasts, cried out hysterically, and threw themselves on the ground with skirts hitched high. Men fell down anywhere with a groan and copulated in the most impossible positions and combinations: grandfather with virgin, odd-jobber with lawyer's spouse, apprentice with nun, Jesuit with freemason's wife. The air grew heavy with the sweet odour of sweating lust and filled with loud cries, grunts and moans from ten thousand human beasts.

Grenouille's Triumph and Terror

Grenouille stood at the open carriage door and smiled—or rather, an ugly, cynical smirk lay upon his lips, reflecting both his total triumph and his total contempt. He, born with no odour of his own on the most stinking spot in the world, raised without love, small, hunchbacked, lame, ugly, an abomination within and without, had managed to make the world admire him, love him, desire him, idolize him. He had performed a Promethean feat, creating an aura more radiant than any human being had ever possessed. Yet in that moment of his greatest triumph, he was terrified. He could not enjoy one second of it. His whole disgust for humankind rose up within him and completely soured his triumph, so that he felt not only no joy, but not even the least bit of satisfaction. What he had always longed for—that other people should love him—became at the moment of its achievement unbearable, because he did not love them himself, he hated them. The more he hated them, the more they worshipped him, perceiving only his counterfeit aura, his fragrant disguise, his stolen perfume.

The Collapse of Justice

The scheduled execution degenerated into an orgy of adoration that nullified the entire legal process. Antoine Richis, the father of Grenouille's last victim, who had reserved a front-row place to watch the twelve blows crash down upon the murderer, instead ran across the parade grounds like a raven or an avenging angel, threw his arms around Grenouille, and whimpered, "Forgive me, my son, my dear son, forgive me!" He later adopted Grenouille as his heir, declaring him beautiful like his daughter. The magistrate overturned the verdict, all witnesses recanted, and Grenouille was declared free. The town council, without mentioning the events or even Grenouille's name, resolved to dismantle the scaffold and grandstand. The judges agreed to close the case, place the files in the archives without registry, and open new proceedings against an unidentified murderer. Dominique Druot was arrested, tortured, and executed in Grenouille's place. The town forgot the events so totally that travellers inquiring about the infamous murderer found not a single sane person who could give them any information.

Aftermath and Erasure

The people of Grasse awoke with a terrible hangover, wretchedly sick to their stomachs and sick at heart. Total strangers unwound themselves in horror from intimate embraces; acquaintances, neighbours, spouses stood opposite each other painfully embarrassed by their public nakedness. Many literally erased the experience from their memories. Others tried to shut their eyes, their ears, their minds to it. By noon the grounds were swept clean. The townspeople did not emerge from their houses until evening, and their greetings were of the most cursory sort. Not a word was said about the events. They were all guilty, and never was there greater harmony among the citizens of Grasse than on that day—people lived packed in cotton. The orgy had demonstrated that scent could command the hearts of men more powerfully than law, religion, or reason, and that the collective will could be dissolved into a single, irresistible wave of adoration.