About the War of the Spanish Succession , when his own participation against the Austrians had had a decisive influence on the outcome ; about the Camisards , together with whom he had haunted the Cevennes ; about the daughter of a Huguenot in the Esterel , who , intoxicated by the scent of lavender , had complied with his wishes ; about a forest fire that he had damn near started and which would then have probably set the entire Provence ablaze , as sure as there was a heaven and hell , for a biting mistral had been blowing ; and over and over he told about distilling out in the open fields , at night , by moonlight , accompanied by wine and the screech of cicadas , and about a lavender oil that he had created , one so refined and powerful that you could have weighed it out in silver ; about his apprentice years in Genoa , about his journeyman years in the city of Grasse , where there were as many perfumers as shoemakers , some of them so rich they lived like princes , in magnificent houses with shaded gardens and terraces and wainscoted dining rooms where they feasted with porcelain and golden cutlery , and so on ... Such were the stories Baldini told while he drank his wine and his cheeks grew ruddy from the wine and the blazing fire and from his own enthusiastic story-telling . Grenouille , however , who sat back more in the shadows , did not listen to him at all . He did not care about old tales , he was interested in one thing only : this new process . He stared uninterruptedly at the tube at the top of the alembic out of which the distillate ran in a thin stream
О войне за испанское наследство, когда его собственное участие против австрийцев оказало решающее влияние на исход; о Камисарах, вместе с которыми он бродил по Севеннам; о дочери гугенота в Эстереле, которая, опьяненная ароматом лаванды, выполнила его желание; о лесном пожаре, который он, черт возьми, едва не разжег и который тогда, вероятно, поджег бы весь Прованс, так же верно, как и рай и ад, потому что дул ядовитый мистраль; и снова и снова он рассказывал о дистилляции в открытом поле, ночью, при лунном свете, в сопровождении вина и визга цикад, и о созданном им лавандовом масле, таком очищенном и мощном, что его можно было взвесить. в серебре; о годах своего ученичества в Генуе, Однако Гренуй, который больше сидел в тени, совсем его не слушал. Ему не было дела до старых сказок, его интересовало только одно: этот новый процесс. Он неотрывно смотрел на трубку наверху перегонного куба, из которой тонкой струйкой вытекал дистиллят.