Louise Beauxvalière

**Louise Beauxvalière** (1878) is the main character in Michiel Korte's story "Wealth & Poverty" and the second child of Theodore Beauxvalière and Dominica Beauxvalière.

## Appearence

Louise is described as very attractive with shining locks of blonde hair and grey eyes. She tends to have a liking to tight dresses of rich fabrics.

## Throughout the book

The story starts in 1950, when a 72 year old Louise tells her visiting grandchildren Victor and Beatrice the story of her life.

It starts in 1893, Louise, 15, is living at a grande estate belonging to her aristocratic parents. She has everything untill her father catches up to his gambling debts and the family falls in poverty. Louise and her siblings are forced to leave England for a new home in America.

They end up living in a poor region of Brooklyn, New York (Midwood) except for Wilfred. The family's last money is used to send him to Harvard.The three daughters Louise, Adelaide and Maxime are sad because of their new life. Maxime because she can't get an education or become an explorer scientist, Adelaide because she can't get married to high aristocracy and Louise because her opportunities of singing are limited.

She starts working in a restaurant with Adelaide and for a year things are mostly fine. Their father suddenly leaves and never returns. Another two years later, in 1896, Adelaide marries rich industrial Philip Haworth, who is twenty years older. She leaves the family and Louise resents her for never helping them after her marriage. In the restaurant, a certain costumer named Charles Quill gets her singing in a café and later stand in for a friend at the opera.

She marries Charles and starts to live at Quill estate in 1900. As a now professional opera singer, she is able to take in her dementing mother and send Maxime away to Wilfred, who has a good house in Boston. After a year, Adelaide returns to New York with her baby, Amandine. Philip has died and she fears her fate as the family thinks she killed him.

Ten years later, in 1911, Amandine is kidnapped and both sisters are restless. Louise is also pregnant after years of trying. A baby girl, Elise, is born and the kidnapper turns out to be Theo, the father of Louise and Adelaide who kidnapped his own grandchild. Seeing her husband gives Dominica a heart attack, which kills her. Charles sends Theo away and so he steals money to get a train ticket: to Boston. Maxime encounters her father at the house she shares with Wilfred in Boston. Thinking she's going mad, she writes a letter to her sisters. By the time Louise and Adelaide arrive, Theo is dead in the gateway. They try to burry him but the wild dogs dig him up, so they lie him in the gutter. That night, Louise dedicates her song to her father.

1921, Amandine is getting married to neighbour Connor but her paternal uncle swears revenge on Adelaide for getting Philips money after his death. Foryeas this fight continues, going even as far as a raping attempt on Adelaide, but she is saved by Charles.

Elise tries to marry a Haworth as a peace offer but he flees with his true love. Maxime shows up after years of travelling and hands out a Aztekan treasure she has found to the Haworth family. The fight is stopped. Maxime's young assistent, Leopold, falls in love with Elise and the two start dating. They marry in 1931 but then move to Philadelphia to start a school for girls and boys. Her story concludes with the opening of their school in 1934. Louise and Charles are there, of course and Adelaide is there too with Amandine, Connor and their five year old daughter named Charlotte who is the first to go to the school.

The story then goes back to 1950, where Victor and Beatrice ask their grandmother what happened after. Louise said: "Nothing much" and explains how Connor and Leopold fought in the war and returned peacefully but Charles died in 1947 of old age. When asking what happened to Charlotte, she herself comes in to take the children on a walk and tells her own story.