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Sunday, August 06, 2006

Perfume - poor doggy!

He first tried it with a puppy. He enticed it away from its mother with a piece of meat, all the way from the slaughter-house to the laboratory, and as the animal panted excitedly and lunged joyfully for the meat in Grenouille's left hand, he gave one quick, hard blow to the back of its head with a piece of wood he held in his right. Death descended o the puppy so suddenly that the expression of happiness was still on its mouth and in its eyes long after Grenouille had bedded it down in the impregnating room on a grate between tow greased plates, where it exuded its pure doggy scent, unadulterated by the sweat of fear. To be sure, one had to be careful! Carcasses, just as plucked blossoms, spoiled quickly. And so Grenouille stood guard over his victim, for about twelve hours, until he noticed that the first wisps of carrion scent - not really unpleasant, but adulterating nevertheless - rose up from the dog's body. He stopped the enfleurage at once, got rid of the carcass, and put the impregnated oil in a pot, where he carefully rinsed it. He distilled the alcohol down to about a thimbleful and filled a tiny glass tube with these few remaining drops. The perfume smelled clearly of dog - moist, fresh, tallowy and a bit pungent. It smelled amazingly like dog. And whe Grenouille let the old bitch at the slaughter-house sniff at it, she broke out in yelps of joy and whimpered and would not take her nose out of the glass tube. Grenouille closed it up tight and put it in his pocket and bore it with him for a long time as as souvenir of his day of triumph, when for the first time he had succeeded in robbing a living creature on its aromatic soul.

De todas as mortes a do cão foi a que me impressionou mais... chamem-me insensível se quiserem, mas coitado do cachorrinho!

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