Perrot—Violante

Perrot and Violante are the children of Gautier of Antwerp, separated during their father’s exile and raised for years under assumed names. Their sibling relationship is shaped by a shared lesson in concealment, a painful division between households, and a reunion that turns their survival apart into the means of restoring their family’s standing.

Identity and Origins

When Gautier fled after being falsely condemned, he reached London with his two young children. The boy, Louis, was about nine; his sister Violante was about seven. Gautier warned them to endure the poverty that fortune had imposed through no fault of their own and, above all, never to disclose their family or origin if they valued their lives. To protect that secret, he renamed Louis Perrot and Violante Jeannette. Their new names marked not a change in their kinship but the concealment required by their father’s exile.

The children understood their father’s instructions as far as their young ages allowed, and their later conduct showed that they kept them. The relationship therefore begins under the pressure of a joint duty: they are siblings who must preserve their identity by withholding it. Their father’s account of their origins is itself a cover story, not a disclosure to the households that take them in.

Separation into Different Households

At a London church door, a noblewoman, the wife of an English marshal, saw Gautier and the children begging for alms. Asked about them, Gautier claimed to be from Picardy and attributed their departure to the misconduct of an older son. The lady was especially taken with Jeannette’s appearance and manners. She offered to take the girl into her household and, if she proved worthy, arrange an honorable marriage for her. Gautier accepted, weeping as he entrusted his daughter to the woman’s care.

After parting with Violante, Gautier travelled on with Perrot. In Wales, Perrot joined the sons of another marshal and other gentlemen’s children at their running and leaping games. He performed each exercise as dexterously as the others, or better. When the marshal learned that the boy was the son of a poor man who came for alms, he asked for him. Gautier gave Perrot up too, although the separation grieved him, and continued alone toward Ireland, eventually taking service as a lackey or horseboy.

Thus the siblings’ childhoods diverged sharply. Violante grew up in the London household, where the noblewoman and her husband, along with others in the house, favored her; Perrot entered a Welsh marshal’s household after displaying his ability among its children. Each was cared for and given a route out of destitution, but neither household knew the children’s true parentage. Their separation protected them from the danger surrounding Gautier while keeping their shared origin unspoken.

Different Paths and Shared Fortune

Violante, still known as Jeannette, grew in years and beauty under the London gentlewoman’s protection. The lady planned to marry her honorably, believing her to be the daughter of the poor Picard Gautier had claimed to be. In time, Violante married the lady’s son, Jamy Lamiens. She had several children with him; their eldest was no more than eight when Gautier later came seeking news of his family.

Perrot’s abilities likewise carried him into a position far removed from the poverty in which he had arrived. During the plague, after the young woman who inherited the Welsh marshal’s estate had lost nearly all her household, she took Perrot as her husband with the approval and counsel of the surviving gentlemen. He became lord of her inheritance. When the King of England heard of the marshal’s death and Perrot’s worth, he appointed him marshal in the dead man’s place. By the time Gautier found him again, Perrot was a great lord, though his father still held back from revealing himself until he knew what had become of Violante.

Recognition and Reunion

Eighteen years after Gautier’s flight from Paris, he left Ireland to learn whether his children had survived. He found Perrot established as marshal, then went to London and discovered that Jeannette had married the son of the woman who had taken her in. Gautier counted his past hardships as little beside the news that both children were alive and prosperous. His search confirms the different outcomes of their separation without undoing the bond between them: each had built a life under an assumed identity, but both remained part of the family he sought to recover.

Gautier approached Violante’s neighborhood in the guise of a beggar. Jamy, seeing an old and poor man, had him brought inside and given food. The children gathered around the visitor, caressing him so persistently that their caretaker could not call them away. Gautier recognized his grandchildren, and their spontaneous affection for him sets the scene for the kinship revelation. Violante herself then came out to see what held them; Gautier still did not immediately disclose who he was.

When the King of England announced rewards for information about Gautier or either child, Gautier went to Jamy and asked him to accompany him to Perrot. There he revealed that Jamy had married Perrot’s sister and that neither she nor her husband had received a dowry from their family. Gautier proposed that Jamy claim the reward by identifying Perrot and Violante as the children of the Count of Antwerp. Perrot recognized his father, fell weeping at his feet, and embraced him. Jamy, first astonished and then ashamed of earlier insults he had directed at the disguised Gautier, also asked forgiveness, which Gautier granted.

The siblings’ reunion completes the family’s return to public recognition. Perrot’s disclosure leads the king to recognize Gautier, restore him with clothing, servants, horses, and equipment befitting his rank, and reinstate him in his former position and more. Jamy receives the promised reward, while Gautier’s reminder that his grandchildren were not descended from a vagabond makes the hidden family identity explicit. The two children had been separated to keep them safe; their adult lives, and Perrot’s recognition of their father, now allow the family to meet again in joy and restored honor.