Hathor did not take Pomona to see the famous Mona Lisa. Instead, she led her to the grand painting gallery on the second floor, where Pomona had already seen many of the works in all kinds of books and magazines, along with countless analyses, including Liberty Leading the People in Gallery 7.
Hathor led her to Gallery 75 nearby to view another enormous painting.
It seemed to depict a shipwreck. A bare-chested man, like the goddess in Liberty Leading the People, held up a strip of red cloth. But the cloth in the goddess's hand symbolized the French tricolor and looked bright and vivid, while the cloth in the man's hand was dull.
"This painting is called The Raft of the Medusa," Hathor said. "How does it make you feel?"
Pomona found it hard to put into words.
Liberty Leading the People, which she had just seen, also contained many corpses, yet it had not given her the same feeling as The Raft of the Medusa.
"Disgusting." After thinking for a long time, Pomona finally found a word.
"Why?" Hathor asked with a smile as she drank red wine.
"I know the story behind this painting. These shipwrecked sailors ate the corpses of the dead because they were starving, didn't they?" Pomona said. "The dead were the ones unwilling to eat corpses, while the living were the ones who did so to survive."
"You heard what Bonaparte said. As long as soldiers could keep themselves alive, the lives of millions meant nothing to them. These sailors were all members of the French navy. After Bonaparte abdicated and the Bourbon dynasty was restored, the captain assigned to command the Medusa cruiser was an aristocrat with theory but no practical experience. This shipwreck had an enormous negative impact on the newly restored