“Schwob told us further:
‘Baudelaire, in a beer tavern, declared: “There’s a smell of destruction here.” “Why, no,” he was told, “There’s a smell of sauerkraut, and of slightly warm woman.” But Baudelaire repeated with violence: “I tell you it smells of destruction!” ‘ “
(Jules Renard, January 1892, p. 45 in The Journals of Jules Renard, ed. & trans. Louise Bogan & Elizabeth Roget.)
Reminds me of the hero of McCarthy’s Remainder. “Smells like cordite.”