Murder of the red-haired girl

On the night of 1 September 1753, during the fireworks celebrating the anniversary of the King's coronation at the Pont-Royal, Grenouille, standing in the shadow of the Pavillon de Flore, caught a scent so extraordinary that it pierced his heart. It was a premonition of a scent, a tiny atom of something he had never smelled before, and it immediately became the key he believed would unlock the ordering of all odours. He felt that without possessing it, his life would be bungled, and he was almost sick with excitement as he tracked it across the river, through the crowd, and into the dark streets of the left bank.

The Hunt and the Discovery

Grenouille followed the scent, which he described as a blend of evanescence and substance, like thin, shimmering silk and pastry soaked in honey-sweet milk, a unity that seemed impossible yet existed. The scent led him up the rue de Seine, then into the narrow rue des Marais, and through a low entryway into a back courtyard. There, in the light of a single candle, sat a girl of about thirteen or fourteen, cleaning yellow plums. Grenouille recognized at once that she was the source of the scent he had followed from half a mile away. He was initially confused, unable to believe that such an exquisite scent could come from a human being, for he had always found human odour repulsive. But as he smelled her more closely, he perceived the harmony of her sweat, hair, and skin as a perfume so rich and balanced that it seemed pure beauty, the higher principle by which all other odours must be ordered.

The Murder and the Taking of the Scent

Grenouille knew that unless he possessed this scent, his life would have no meaning. He approached the girl slowly, stepping under the overhanging roof. She felt a cold draught and turned, frozen with terror at the sight of him. He put his hands to her throat and strangled her, keeping his eyes closed tight to lose not the least trace of her scent. After she was dead, he laid her on the ground among the plum pits, tore off her dress, and thrust his face into her skin, sweeping his nostrils across her entire body, from belly to breast to neck, gathering up the last fragments of her scent under her chin, in her navel, and in the wrinkles inside her elbow. He crouched beside her for a while, sealing up his innermost compartments to preserve the scent, then blew out the candle and left as the people began returning from the fireworks.

Consequences and Transformation

That night, Grenouille's closet seemed a palace, and he was quivering with happiness, unable to sleep for pure bliss. He felt as if he had been born a second time, finally knowing who he really was: nothing less than a genius. The murder had provided him with the master scent, the magic formula for everything that could make a perfume great: delicacy, power, stability, variety, and terrifying, irresistible beauty. He understood that his life's purpose was to revolutionize the odoriferous world, and he began to systematically arrange the millions of building blocks of odour in his memory, constructing an inner fortress of magnificent scents. The girl's face and body were forgotten; only the principle of her scent remained, preserved and made his own. This event set him on the path to becoming a creator of scents, and he never again departed from what he believed was the direction fate had pointed him.