The painting Les deux têtes visually interprets a specific moment from Victor Hugo’s epic poem cycle La Légende des siècles, specifically from the section titled La confiance du marquis Fabrice. In the poem a violent exchange leads to the decapitation of two figures at a banquet, and Leroux captures this exact moment by placing both severed heads in the foreground while the scene of the event is implied behind them. Rather than creating a loose symbol of duality, the painting acts as a direct illustration of the narrative’s dramatic climax, embodying Hugo’s blending of history and legend and translating the poem’s shocking instant into visual form.