Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Leaving Paris, Grenouille discovers that the air outside the city in the countryside is far cleaner and purer. In Paris, there lived over half a million people, and walking now in the country, he realizes that it is not the city but the people there who seem so oppressive. Coming to this realization, he resolves to avoid all cities and villages when he can, content to simply walk cross-country, traveling by night. “The more Grenouille had become accustomed to purer air, the more sensitive he was to human odor” (122), and so as time goes on, he searches out the greatest possible solitude, as far away from human beings as he can possibly travel.

He settles on an isolated area above a dormant volcano, the Plomb du Cantal, with a peak that rises over 6,000 feet. Reaching the mountain in mid-August 1756, he realizes that no matter how hard he might try, he cannot detect even the slightest hint of human odor. He is totally free from any human influence: “He was truly completely alone! He was the only human being in the world! He erupted with thundering jubilation” (125).

Settling into his new abode, he finds water and a small amount of food that is readily available in the wild, content to subsist purely on what he can scavenge: “whenever he felt hungry, had wolfed down anything vaguely edible that had crossed his path” (126).