Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

A few days after leaving Montpellier, Grenouille arrives at his chosen destination: the small town of Grasse, of which Baldini told him all those years ago, “the uncontested center for production of and commerce in scents, perfumes, soaps, and oils” (172). Grenouille intends to learn new techniques for perfumery here. The town itself is filthy, though this doesn’t bother Grenouille, and he wanders the streets simply observing the comings and goings of the townspeople. All at once, however, he is stopped in his tracks.

Something nearby is giving off a scent that holds him in rapture, “a scent so exquisite that in all his life his nose had never before encountered one like it—or, indeed, only once before…” (175). Tracking the scent, he eventually finds its source in a garden that comes right up the town wall. The scent is so similar to that of the girl with the plums that he hardly knows whether he is here or there, so totally is he struck by the scent. Slowly Grenouille realizes that this scent is not quite the same. This delights him, for he knows that this smell is even greater than the one he experienced before.

Realizing that this new scent similarly comes from a young girl, he determines to possess the scent if it is the last thing he does, “to peel it from her like skin and to make her scent his own” (178).