Creation of the human scent

The creation of the human scent is the turning point at which Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born without any body odour of his own, first acquires the power to pass as an ordinary human being. After seven years of solitary retreat on the Plomb du Cantal and a brief, farcical career as the Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse's scientific exhibit, Grenouille realizes that his odourlessness—which had always made him invisible and repellent to others—can be overcome by artifice. In the laboratory of the Montpellier perfumer Runel, he compounds a perfume that imitates the basic human effluvium, using ingredients so vile that the mixture itself is a kind of olfactory lie. This invention not only lets him walk unrecognized through the streets for the first time in his life; it also gives him the confidence to conceive of a far greater perfume, one that will make him not merely acceptable but adored.

Ingredients and Method

Grenouille gathers his materials from the most degraded sources available in Runel's workshop. Behind the threshold of the door leading to the courtyard he finds a small pile of fresh cat excrement, takes half a teaspoon of it, and places it in a mixing bottle together with several drops of vinegar and finely ground salt. Under the worktable he discovers a thumbnail-sized piece of cheese left from one of Runel's lunches, already old and decomposing, giving off a biting, pungent odour. From the lid of a sardine tub at the back of the shop he scrapes off a rancid, fishy residue, then mixes it with rotten egg, castoreum, ammonia, nutmeg, horn shavings, and singed pork rind, all finely ground. To this he adds a relatively large amount of civet, combines these ghastly ingredients with alcohol, lets the mixture digest, and filters it into a second bottle. The resulting bilge smells putrid, like a sewer; when its vapour is fanned once to mix with fresh air, it evokes the stench of Paris on a hot summer day at the corner of the Rue aux Fers and the Rue de la Lingerie, where the odours from Les Halles, the Cimetière des Innocents, and the overcrowded tenements converge. On top of this disgusting base—which smells more like a cadaver than a human being—Grenouille spreads a layer of fresh, oily scents: peppermint, lavender, turpentine, lime, and eucalyptus. He then disguises and tames these with the pleasant bouquet of fine floral oils: geranium, rose, orange blossom, and jasmine. After a second dilution with alcohol and a splash of vinegar, nothing remains of the disgusting base on which the mixture was built. The latent stench lies lost and unnoticeable under the fresh ingredients; the nauseous part, pampered by the scent of flowers, has become almost interesting. Strangely, there is no putrefaction left to smell. The perfume seems to exhale the robust, vivacious scent of life.

The Principle of Human Odour

Grenouille understands that there is no single human odour; every person smells differently, and he recognizes thousands of individual olfactory signatures. Yet he also knows that a basic perfumatory theme underlies all humanity: a sweaty-oily, sour-cheesy, richly repulsive effluvium that clings to everyone equally, above which each individual's personal aura hovers as a small cloud of more refined particularity. Most people, however, are unaware that they even possess such a personal aura; they live exclusively within the basic human stench and feel secure only when surrounded by it. Only a person who gives off that standard vile vapour is ever considered one of their own. Grenouille's perfume is designed to reproduce exactly this primitive human effluvium. It does not smell like a scent but like a human being who gives off scent. If one smelled it in a dark room, one would think a second person was standing there. If a real human being applied it, that person would seem to have the smell of two people—a monstrous double creature, blurred and out of focus, like something at the bottom of a lake beneath the shiver of waves.

The Deceptive Copy

Grenouille also prepares a second perfume, a sort of copy of the first, likewise composed of fresh and floral elements but containing nothing of the witches' brew as a base. Instead, it uses a totally conventional foundation of musk, ambergris, a tiny bit of civet, and cedar-wood oil. By itself this second perfume smells totally different from the first—flatter, more innocent, detoxified—because it lacks the components of the imitation human odour. But once a normal human being applies it and marries it to his own natural scent, it can no longer be distinguished from the one Grenouille has created exclusively for himself. He fills two flacons with the first perfume, then strips and sprinkles his clothes with it. He dabs himself in the armpits, between the toes, on the genitals, on the chest, neck, ears, and hair, puts his clothes back on, and leaves the laboratory.

First Effects and Triumph

As Grenouille steps onto the street, he is suddenly afraid, for he knows that for the first time in his life he is giving off a human odour. He finds that he stinks, stinks quite disgustingly. He slips down toward the river through the darkest and narrowest alleyways, where tanners and dyers have their workshops, and forces himself to walk slowly past people, bringing his odour with him in a large, compact cloud. From his youth, he had been accustomed to people passing him and taking no notice whatever—not out of contempt, but because they were quite unaware of his existence. There was no space surrounding him, no waves broke from him into the atmosphere as with other people; he had no shadow to cast across another's face. Now, in the streets of Montpellier, he senses and sees with his own eyes that he exerts an effect on people. A woman bent over a well raises her head to see who is there and, apparently satisfied, turns back to her bucket. A man standing with his back to him turns around and gazes after him with curiosity. Children scoot to one side not out of fear but to make room for him. He grows more self-assured, moving more rapidly toward people, passing them more closely, even grazing a passer-by's arm as if by chance. He jostles a man, apologizes, and the man—who only yesterday would have reacted to Grenouille's sudden appearance as if to a thunderbolt—behaves as though nothing has happened, accepts the apology, even smiles briefly, and claps him on the shoulder. Grenouille then enters the square before the Cathedral of Saint-Pierre, where a wedding has just ended and a crowd is packed together. He shoves his way into the densest part of the crush, spreads his arms and legs, opens his collar so that the odour can flow unimpeded from his body, and his joy is boundless when he notices that the others notice nothing. They inhale his concoction of cat excrement, cheese, and vinegar as an odour just like their own and accept him, Grenouille the cuckoo's egg, in their midst as a human being among human beings. He lifts a little girl onto his arm so she can see better; the mother not only tolerates this but thanks him, and the child yells with delight. Standing there in the bosom of the crowd, Grenouille breaks out in a black jubilation, a wicked feeling of triumph that sets him quivering and excites him like an attack of lechery. He knows now that he can do much more: he will create a scent not merely human but superhuman, an angel's scent so indescribably good and vital that whoever smells it will be enchanted and with his whole heart will have to love him.