And because people are stupid and use their noses only for blowing, but believe absolutely anything they see with their eyes, they will say it is because this is a girl with beauty and grace and charm.
And suddenly solitude fell across his heart like a dusty reflection. He closed his eyes. The dark doors within him opened and he entered. The next performance in the theater of Grenouille’s soul was beginning.
He would be able to create a scent that was not merely human, but super human, an angels scent, so indescribably good and vital that who ever smelt it would be enchanted and with his whole heart would have to love him.
Ignorance is the only possible happiness this world has to offer
…talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.
He succeeded in being considered totally uninteresting. People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.
People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.
He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid.
He had escaped the abhorrent taint! He was truly completely alone! He was the only human being in the world!
He lay in his stony crypt like his own corpse, hardly breathing, his heart hardly beating – and yet lived as intensively and dissolutely as ever a rake had lived in the wide world outside.
When they finally did dare it, at first with stolen glances and then candid ones, they had to smile. They were uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love.
And he wallowed in disgust and loathing, and his hair stood on end at the delicious horror.