ead for her son and solicit her own maid.

With this the young man was nowise content and presently waxed
grievously worse, which when his mother saw, she opened her mind to
Jeannette, but, finding her more constant than ever, recounted what
she had done to her husband, and he and she resolved of one accord,
grievous though it seemed to them, to give her to him to wife,
choosing rather to have their son alive with a wife unsorted to his
quality than dead without any; and so, after much parley, they did;
whereat Jeannette was exceeding content and with a devout heart
rendered thanks to God, who had not forgotten her; but for all that
she never avouched herself other than the daughter of a Picard. As for
the young man, he presently recovered and celebrating his nuptials,
the gladdest man alive, proceeded to lead a merry life with his bride.

Meanwhile, Perrot, who had been left in Wales with the King of
England's marshal, waxed likewise in favour with his lord and grew up
very goodly of his person and doughty as any man in the island,
insomuch that neither in tourneying nor jousting nor in any other act
of arms was there any in the land who could cope with him; wherefore
he was everywhere known and famous under the name of Perrot the
Picard. And even as God had not forgotten his sister, so on like wise
He showed that He had him also in mind; for that a pestilential
sickness, being come into those parts, carried off well nigh half the
people thereof, besides that most part of those who survived fled for
fear into other lands; wherefore the whole country appeared desert. In
this mortality, the marshal his lord and his lady and only son,
together with many others, brothers and nephews and kinsmen, all died,
nor was any left of all his house save a daughter, just husband-ripe,
and Perrot, with sundry other serving folk. The pestilence being
somewhat abated, the young lady, with the approof and by the counsel
of some few gentlemen of the country[128] left alive, took Perrot, for
that he was a man of worth and prowess, to husband and made him lord
of all that had fallen to her by inheritance; nor was it long ere the
King of England, hearing the marshal to be dead and knowing the worth
of Perrot the Picard, substituted him in the dead man's room and made
him his marshal. This, in brief, is what came of the two innocent
children of the Count of Antwerp, left by him for lost.

[Footnote 128: _Paesani_, lit., countrymen; but Bocc