Complete and unabridged, with 35 full-page plates by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Hubert Robert and Jean-Baptiste Greuze. Bernard Mauprat is raised by a family of robber barons in a tower in the Berry, and a cousin they have carried off makes him swear to be human before she will speak to him again — a promise that takes the rest of his life. Sand left her husband at twenty-seven and wore men's clothes to get into places women were not admitted; this 1837 novel argues that a person can be made over, and does not pretend the making is gentle. Thirty-five plates after painters from Chardin to Munch follow the boy at the centre of the story from snow and ruins to the reading woman and the burnt opera house.