Abstract: This article examines the importance of the sense of smell in Aubigné’s poetic depiction of the natural world. Although it is less important than our spiritual understanding of the life to come, in Calvinist teachings, smell is nonetheless essential to the binary conception of this earthly world, since the finest perfumes never exist without the accompanying threat of putrefaction. When Aubigné depicts the delights of the Second Coming, however, smell is the first sense evoked.
