The Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse

TL;DR: The Montpellier nobleman with a crackpot scientific theory — the fluidum letale, a deadly gas exhaled by the earth — who plucks the cave-emerged Grenouille out of a provincial prison, dresses him in court silks, and parades him before the Montpellier academy as a "cured patient" while Grenouille uses the access to invent his first synthetic human scent.

Spoilers through Chapter 32.

Snapshot

A tall, lean French philosophe-aristocrat in his late forties, peacock-blue silk coat, lace at the throat, a silver-headed walking stick — a man who would turn his own grandmother into a public demonstration if it proved his theory.

Role in the story

The Marquis is the comic interlude that lets Grenouille reenter human society. After seven years in a volcanic cave Grenouille has crawled, half-feral, into a Languedoc town; the local jailers don't know what to do with him, and the Marquis pays to extract him as a perfect specimen for his pet theory. The "cure" — clean baths, court silks, fresh air — produces a presentable young man within a few weeks, which the Marquis then shows off to the Montpellier academy as Exhibit A in his lectures on the fluidum letale.

What Grenouille is really doing during these weeks is using the Marquis's resources to compound his first artificial human scent — a paste of cat dung, sour cheese rind, and vinegar that he can wear like a mask. By the time the demonstrations are over, Grenouille slips out of the Marquis's life entirely and walks south to Grasse. The Marquis disappears from the book; the implied disgrace, when his star patient vanishes, is not depicted but is part of the book's pattern of consequences for the men who try to use Grenouille.

Personality in plain English

Theatrical, vain, humorlessly self-important. A genuine believer in his own crackpot theory, not a cynic. Someone whose social class gives him resources and whose intellectual class makes him incapable of using them well. Funny on the page in a way the book mostly isn't.

What he wants

Vindication of the fluidum letale theory. Membership in the right academies. To be remembered by posterity as a man of science. The book is acidly clear that he will not be.

What he fears (or hides)

Being laughed at. Which is, of course, exactly what is happening — and not happening — around him in every chapter he appears in.

Key relationships

• Grenouille — patient, exhibit, ticket out of a provincial cell. He thinks he's adopted Grenouille; Grenouille has actually adopted him.
• The Montpellier academy — his audience. They listen politely; the book gives them no individual faces, which is itself a verdict.

Visual identity

Tall, lean, energetic. Long aquiline face with pointed chin. Animated eyes, expressive long-fingered hands raised in mid-gesture. Formal powdered white wig in tight curls pulled tight and queued in a black silk bag at the nape (perruque à bourse). Cleanshaven. Embroidered peacock-blue silk justaucorps with silver-thread embroidery, matching long peacock-blue silk waistcoat with brass buttons, peacock-blue silk knee breeches, white silk stockings, red-heeled buckle shoes. Generous lace at throat and cuffs. A silver-headed walking stick. The defining accessory in his lecture scenes is a brass-and-glass apparatus — a "vital-air machine" of copper tubing and small glass spheres — on a velvet-draped side table, beside a leather-bound treatise on the fluidum letale.

Aliases

The following names and references in the book all point to this character. Use any of these as link anchors back to this page.

• The Marquis (canonical — the most common form)
• Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse
• The Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse
• Taillade-Espinasse