"Claude Gueux" (French pronunciation: [klod ɡø]) is a short story written by Victor Hugo in 1834.
Charles Carlier, merchant, and editor of the Revue de Paris considered the work to be of such great educational value that he arranged for copies to be sent to all the deputies in France.
So one day, he obtains an axe and a pair of scissors at the prison workshop, and waits there for the Director's night time inspection.
But Claude does not die, and a judicial inquiry begins in which he admits murdering the Director and gives the reason as being that he felt like it.
In court, Claude makes an eloquent speech in which he calmly tells the judge the full details of the events which had provoked him to commit the crime of murder, and he admits his guilt.
The president of the court then sums up the case, and in doing so he only mentions the facts about Claude Gueux which are adverse, albeit incontrovertibly true.
Claude declines to appeal, but upon returning to the prison, a nun who had nursed him when he was recovering from his wounds, begs him to reconsider.
A lengthy epilogue follows the story, in which Victor Hugo criticizes the lack of proportionality as between education and criminal punishment, and the cruel French society of the nineteenth century.