Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Staring at the flacon of Pélissier’s perfume, Baldini grumbles at the fact that the perfume is truly delightful. In order to replicate the perfume, he will have to determine the various ingredients that are all contained within it. To do this, he takes out a handkerchief, douses it with the perfume, and begins to smell and attempt the discerning process. Grabbing paper and ink, he enthusiastically sits down to begin the process of analyzing the perfume.

No matter how hard he tries, however, he cannot discern the various ingredients of which it is composed, and by the end of two hours, he succeeds in doing nothing but stopping up his nose with inflammation. The whole exercise is pointless, for Baldini never learned the art of “fractionary smelling” by which one dissects and analyzes scents. Despairing of his project and his life and business along with it, he opens the window and tosses the perfume into the river. He decides in that instant that he will go tomorrow to a local notary and sell both his house and his business and be done with the entire thing before anyone realizes that his business is failing. Just before heading off to bed, however, the doorbell rings at the service entrance.