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Claude Gueux, whose very name evokes *Les Misérables* and announces the immense Jean Valjean thirty years in advance, was a poor devil, undoubtedly a scoundrel. In 1831, sentenced to eight years in prison for theft, harassed by his chief warden, he murdered the latter with blows from an ax. He swears he was driven to crime. His fellow prisoners support him. His judges nevertheless send him to the scaffold. From this sordid news item and this trial, Hugo will make the most violent and passionate indictment. First, against the death penalty, which this worker, this damned of the earth, did not deserve. Then, against an inhuman society.