A passionate tale of love and treachery. In 1533, an Italian orphan with an uncanny knack for creating fragrance is plucked from poverty to become Catherine de Medici's perfumer. Over the years Ren?ʼ le Florentine is occasionally called upon to put his vast knowledge to a darker purpose - the creation of deadly poisons used to dispatch the Queen's rivals. But it's Ren?ʼ's other passion - a desire to reanimate a human breath, to bring back the lives of the two people whose deaths have devastated him - that incites a dangerous treasure hunt five centuries later.