Perfume of Illusion

Clement Raynaud, 48, a serious fellow, had always been interested in the occult, even when he was a cop. He got a diploma in graphology from one of those schools that advertise in pulp magazines. In a small laboratory in Toulouse in 1946 he began making a secret perfume of eau de cologne, Cyprian essence, ferns, the excretions of vipers and scorpions. Raynaud advertised: "This perfume is especially prepared to help you, even through the mails, to seduce, charm, or to awaken in you and in others troubling desires. To fortify your amorous magnetism, just a drop on a love letter will suffice."

Soon Raynaud was shipping out 100 bottles a day, at 300 to 1,000 francs a bottle. A grateful Swedish lady testified: "Thanks to your perfume I rediscovered the love of my fiance who, formerly very cold, now leaps with passion on to my perfumed breast." Wrote a Minnesota housewife: "Thanks to your perfume my husband came back to me. Please send another bottle so I can hold him."

Raynaud's biggest market was Africa. At Brazzaville, in French Equatorial Africa, High Commissioner Bernard Cornut-Gentile, engaged in a war against native fetishism, found Raynaud's love potion filling the air around him. High Commissioner Cornut-Gentile wrote to the district attorney at Toulouse: "With the use of this magnetized love perfume we are marking a return to sorcery. This dangerous current must be stopped." The Toulouse district attorney hauled Raynaud to court and charged him with fraud. Raynaud, who is a bachelor himself, stoutly argued that his was "an agreeable perfume which fixes the sentiments of one person toward another ... [It has] no other object than to assist the love illusion."

The court recessed, taking with it a few bottles of Raynaud's concoction. Last week the judge gave the court's verdict unhesitatingly: "The buyers of this product have not been deceived . . . The perfume has real value; it emits suave and persistent odors. And, by the way. its price is not excessive." A broad smile broke over Raynaud's serious face.

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