About mid-day, after resting herself now and then by travelling from time to time, at the rate of three or four leagues an hour, in what were then called the "little vehicles of the suburbs of Paris," Fantine found herself at Montfermeil, in the Ruelle Boulanger. As she passed the Sergeant of Waterloo, the two little girls in their monster swing had dazzled her, and she stopped before this vision of joy. There are charms in life, and these two little girls were one for this mother. She looked at them with great emotion, for the presence of angels is an announcement of Paradise. She thought she saw over this inn the mysterious HERE of Providence. These two little creatures were evidently happy! She looked then, and admired them with such tenderness that at the moment when the mother was drawing breath between two verses of her song, she could not refrain from saying to her what we have already recorded. "You have two pretty children, Madame." The most ferocious creatures are disarmed by a caress given to their little ones. The mother raised her head, thanked her, and bade her sit down on the door bench. The two women began talking. "My name is Madame Thénardier," the mother of the little ones said; "we keep this inn." Then returning to her romance, she went on humming,-- "Il le faut, je suis chevalier, Et je pars pour la Palestine." This Madame Thénardier was a red-headed, thin, angular woman, the soldier's wife in all its ugliness, and, strange to say, with a languishing air which she owed to reading romances. She was a sort of lackadaisical male-woman. Old romances, working on the imaginations of landladies, produce that effect. She was still young, scarce thirty. If this woman, now sitting, had been standing up, perhaps her height and colossal proportions, fitting for a show, would have at once startled the traveller, destroyed her confidence, and prevented what we have to record. A person sitting instead of standing up--destinies hang on this.