Richis’s gaze rested on him. An infinite benevolence lay in that gaze: tenderness, compassion, the empty, fatuous profundity of a lover.
He smiled, pressed Grenouille’s hand more tightly, and said, “It will all turn out all right. The magistrate has overturned the verdict. All the witnesses have recanted. You are free. You can do whatever you want. But I would like you to stay here with me. I have lost a daughter, but I want to gain you as my son. You’re very much like her. You are beautiful like her, your hair, your mouth, your hand… I have been holding your hand all this time, your hand is like hers. And when I look into your eyes, it’s as if she were looking at me. You are her brother, and I want you to become my son, my friend, my pride and joy, my heir. Are your parents still alive?”
Grenouille shook his head, and Richis’s face turned beet red for joy. “Then will you be my son?” he stammered, jumping up from his stool to sit on the edge of the bed and clasp Grenouille’s other hand as well. “Will you? Will you? Will you have me for a father?-Don’t say anything! Don’t speak! You are still too weak to talk. Just nod”
Grenouille nodded. And joy erupted from Richis’s every pore like scarlet sweat, and he bent down to Grenouille and kissed him on the mouth.
“Sleep now, my dear son!” he said, standing back up again. “I will keep watch over you until you have fallen asleep.” And after he had observed him in mute bliss for a long time: “You have made me very, very happy.”
Grenouille pulled the corners of his mouth apart, the way he had noticed people do when they smile. Then he closed his eyes. He waited a while before letting his respiration grow easy and deep like a sleeper’s. He could feel Richis’s loving gaze on his face. At one point he felt Richis bending forward again to kiss him, but then refraining for fear of waking him. Finally the candle was blown out, and Richis slipped on tiptoe from the room.
Grenouille lay there until he could no longer hear a sound in the house or the town. When he got up, it was already dawn. He dressed and stole away, softly down the hall, softly down the stairs, and through the salon out onto the terrace.
From there you could see over the city wall, out across the valley surrounding Grasse-in clear weather probably as far as the sea. A light fog, or better a haze, hung now over the fields, and the odors that came from them-grass, broom, and rose-seemed washed clean, comfortably plain and simple. Grenouille crossed the garden and climbed over the wall.
Out on the parade grounds he had to fight his way through human effluvia before he reached open country. The whole area and the slopes looked like a gigantic, debauched army camp. Drunken forms by the thousands lay all about, exhausted by the dissipations of their nocturnal festivities, many of them naked, many half exposed, half covered by their clothes, which they had used as a sort of blanket to creep under. It stank of sour wine, of brandy, of sweat and piss, of baby shit and charred meat. The camp-fires where they had roasted, drunk, and danced were still smoking here and there. Now and then a murmur or a snigger would gurgle up from the thousands of snores. It was possible that a few people were still awake, guzzling away the last scraps of consciousness from their brains. But no one saw Grenouille, who carefully but quickly climbed over the scattered bodies as if moving across a swamp. And those who saw him did not recognize him. He no longer had any scent. The miracle was over.
Once he had crossed the grounds, he did not take the road toward Grenoble, nor the one to Cabris, but walked straight across the fields toward the west, never once turning to look back. When the sun rose, fat and yellow and scorching hot, he had long since vanished.
The people of Grasse awoke with a terrible hangover. Even those who had not drunk had heads heavy as lead and were wretchedly sick to their stomachs and wretchedly sick at heart. Out on the parade grounds, by bright sunlight, simple peasants searched for the clothes they had flung off in the excesses of their orgy; respectable women searched for their husbands and children; total strangers unwound themselves in horror from intimate embraces; acquaintances, neighbors, spouses were suddenly standing opposite each other painfully embarrassed by their public nakedness.
For many of them the experience was so ghastly, so completely inexplicable and incompatible with their genuine moral precepts that they had literally erased it from their memories the moment it happened and as a result truly could not recall any of it later. Others, who were not in such sovereign control of their faculties of perception, tried to shut their eyes, their ears, their minds to it-which was not all that easy, for the shame of it was too obvious and too universal. As soon as someone had found his effects and his kin, he beat as hasty and inconspicuous a retreat as possible. By noon the grounds were as good as swept clean.
The townspeople did not emerge from their houses until evening, if at all, to pursue their most pressing errands. Their greetings when they met were of the most cursory sort; they made nothing but small talk. Not a word was said about the events of the morning and the previous night. They were as modest now as they had been uninhibited and brash yesterday. And they were all like that, for they were all guilty. Never was there greater harmony among the citizens of Grasse than on that day-people lived packed in cotton.
Of course, many of them, because of the offices they held, were forced to deal directly with what had happened. The continuity of public life, the inviolability of law and order demanded that swift measures be taken. The town council was in session by afternoon. The gentlemen-the second consul among them-embraced one another mutely as if by this conspiratorial gesture the body were newly constituted. Then without so much as mentioning the events themselves or even the name Grenouille, they unanimously resolved “immediately to have the scaffold and grandstand on the parade grounds dismantled and to have the trampled fields surrounding them restored to their former orderly state.” For this purpose, 160 livres were appropriated.
At the same time the judges met at the provost court. The magistrates agreed without debate to regard the “case of G.” as settled, to close the files, to place them in the archives without registry, and to open new proceedings against the thus-far unidentified murderer of twenty-five maidens in the region around Grasse. The order was passed to the police lieutenant to begin his investigation immediately.
By the next day, he had already made new discoveries. On the basis of incontrovertible evidence, he arrested Dominique Druot, maitre parfumeur in the rue de la Louve, since, after all, it was in his cabin that the clothes and hair of all the victims had been found. The judges were not deceived by the lies he told at first. After fourteen hours of torture, he confessed everything and even begged to be executed as soon as possible-which wish was granted and the execution set for the following day. They strung him up by the gray light of dawn, without any fuss, without scaffold or grandstand, with only the hangman, a magistrate of the court, a doctor, and a priest in attendance. Once death had occurred, had been verified and duly recorded, the body was promptly buried. With that the case was closed.
The town had forgotten it in any event, forgotten it so totally that travelers who passed through in the days that followed and casually inquired about Grasse’s infamous murderer of young maidens found not a single sane person who could give them any information. Only a few fools from the Charite, notorious lunatics, babbled something or other about a great feast on the place du Cours, on account of which they had been forced to vacate their rooms.