The catastrophe that eventually drives Grenouille away from his mountain solitude is the last thing he ever could have foreseen. In the middle of the night, Grenouille has a nightmare in which he is surrounded by a thick fog. He realizes the fog is a cloud of his own odor, but to his horror, he realizes that he smells nothing: “Virtually drowning in himself, he could not for the life of him smell himself!” (138). Grenouille awakes in a panic, thrashing about “as if he had to drive off the odorless fog trying to suffocate him” (139). He runs outside the cave and stares up into the sky at the sun.

He eventually calms down and proceeds to think of how to resolve his terror. He eventually determines that he must have a smell, and he is simply not aware of it: “It is not that I do not smell, for everything smells,” he says, “It is, rather, that I cannot smell that I smell, because I have smelled myself day in day out since my birth” (140). He strips naked and waits outside for several hours, letting the elements cleanse him of any lingering odors. Upon completing this self-ascribed ritual, he gathers his clothes up.