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than his little ego, this building is flauntingly horizontal, its belly in the

mud, thus declaring its allegiance to the carnal, glorifying the gross pleasures

of the flesh above those of the spirit. The statue of a nude female in a place

where men come to be uplifted speaks for itself and requires no further comment.

"A person entering a temple seeks release from himself. He wishes to humble his

pride, to confess his unworthiness, to beg forgiveness. He finds fulfillment in

a sense of abject humility. Man’s proper posture in a house of God is on his

knees. Nobody in his right mind would kneel within Mr. Roark’s temple. The place

forbids it. The emotions it suggests are of a different nature: arrogance,

audacity, defiance, self-exaltation. It is not a house of God, but the cell of a

megalomaniac. It is not a temple, but its perfect antithesis, an insolent

mockery of all religion. We would call it pagan but for the fact that the pagans

were notoriously good architects.

"This column is not the supporter of any particular creed, but simple decency

demands that we respect the religious convictions of our fellow men. We felt we

must explain to the public the nature of this deliberate attack on religion. We

cannot condone an outrageous sacrilege.

"If we seem to have forgotten our function as a critic of purely architectural

values, we can say only that the occasion does not call for it. It is a mistake

to glorify mediocrity by an effort at serious criticism. We seem to recall

something or other that this Howard Roark has built before, and it had the same

ineptitude, the same pedestrian quality of an overambitious amateur. All God’s

chillun may have wings, but, unfortunately, this is not true of all God’s

geniuses. "And that, my friends, is that. We are glad today’s chore is over. We

really do not enjoy writing obituaries."

#

On November 3 Hopton Stoddard filed suit against Howard Roark for breach of

contract and malpractice, asking damages; he asked a sum sufficient to have the

Temple altered by another architect.

#

It had been easy to persuade Hopton Stoddard. He had returned from his journey,

crushed by the universal spectacle of religion, most particularly by the various

forms in which the promise of hell confronted him all over the earth. He had

been driven to the conclusion that his life qualified him for the worst possible

hereafter under any system of faith. It had shaken what remained of his mind.

The ship stewards, on his return trip, had felt certain that the old gentleman

was senile.

On the afternoon of his return Ellsworth Toohey took him to see the Temple.

Toohey said nothing. Hopton Stoddard stared, and Toohey heard Stoddard’s false

teeth clicking spasmodically. The place did not resemble anything Stoddard had

seen anywhere in the world; nor anything he had expected. He did not know what

to think. When he turned a glance of desperate appeal upon Toohey, Stoddard’s

eyes looked like Jell-O. He waited. In that moment, Toohey could have convinced

him of anything. Toohey spoke and said what he said later in his column.

"But you told me this Roark was good!" Stoddard moaned in panic.

"I had expected him to be good," Toohey answered coldly.

"But then--why?"

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"I don’t know," said Toohey--and his accusing glance gave Stoddard to understand

that there was an ominous guilt behind it all, and that the guilt was

Stoddard’s.

Toohey said nothing in the limousine, on their way back to Stoddard’s apartment,

while Stoddard begged him to speak. He would not answer. The silence drove

Stoddard to terror. In the apartment, Toohey led him to an armchair and stood

before him, somber as a judge.

"Hopton, I know why it happened."

"Oh, why?"

"Can you think of any reason why I should have lied to you?"

"No, of course not, you’re the greatest expert and the most honest man living,

and I don’t understand, I just simply don’t understand at all!"

"I do. When I recommended Roark, I had every reason to expect--to the best of my

honest judgment--that he would give you a masterpiece. But he didn’t. Hopton, do

you know what power can upset all the calculations of men?"

"W-what power?"

"God has chosen this way to reject your offering. He did not consider you worthy

of presenting Him with a shrine. I guess you can fool me, Hopton, and all men,

but you can’t fool God. He knows that your record is blacker than anything I

suspected."

He went on speaking for a long time, calmly, severely, to a silent huddle of

terror. At the end, he said:

"It seems obvious, Hopton, that you cannot buy forgiveness by starting at the

top. Only the pure in heart can erect a shrine. You must go through many humbler

steps of expiation before you reach that stage. You must atone to your fellow

men before you can atone to God. This building was not meant to be a temple, but

an institution of human charity. Such as a home for subnormal children."

Hopton Stoddard would not commit himself to that. "Afterward, Ellsworth,

afterward," he moaned. "Give me time." He agreed to sue Roark, as Toohey

suggested, for recovery of the costs of alterations, and later to decide what

these alterations would be.

"Don’t be shocked by anything I will say or write about this," Toohey told him

in parting. "I shall be forced to stage a few things which are not quite true. I

must protect my own reputation from a disgrace which is your fault, not mine.

Just remember that you have sworn never to reveal who advised you to hire

Roark."

On the following day "Sacrilege" appeared in the Banner and set the fuse. The

announcement of Stoddard’s suit lighted it.

Nobody would have felt an urge to crusade about a building; but religion had

been attacked; the press agent had prepared the ground too well, the spring of

public attention was wound, a great many people could make use of it.

The clamor of indignation that rose against Howard Roark and his temple

astonished everyone, except Ellsworth Toohey. Ministers damned the building in

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sermons. Women’s clubs passed resolutions of protest. A Committee of Mothers

made page eight of the newspapers, with a petition that shrieked something about

the protection of their children. A famous actress wrote an article on the

essential unity of all the arts, explained that the Stoddard Temple had no sense

of structural diction, and spoke of the time when she had played Mary Magdalene

in a great Biblical drama. A society woman wrote an article on the exotic

shrines she had seen in her dangerous jungle travels, praised the touching faith

of the savages and reproached modern man for cynicism; the Stoddard Temple, she

said, was a symptom of softness and decadence; the illustration showed her in

breeches, one slim foot on the neck of a dead lion. A college professor wrote a

letter to the editor about his spiritual experiences and stated that he could

not have experienced them in a place like the Stoddard Temple. Kiki Holcombe

wrote a letter to the editor about her views on life and death.

The A.G.A. issued a dignified statement denouncing the Stoddard Temple as a

spiritual and artistic fraud. Similar statements, with less dignity and more

slang, were issued by the Councils of American Builders, Writers and Artists.

Nobody had ever heard of them, but they were Councils and this gave weight to

their voice. One man would say to another: "Do you know that the Council of

American Builders has said this temple is a piece of architectural tripe?" in a

tone suggesting intimacy with the best of the art world. The other wouldn’t want

to reply that he had not heard of such a group, but would answer: "I expected

them to say it. Didn’t you?"

Hopton Stoddard received so many letters of sympathy that he began to feel quite

happy. He had never been popular before. Ellsworth, he thought, was right; his

brother men were forgiving him; Ellsworth was always right.

The better newspapers dropped the story after a while. But the Banner kept it

going. It had been a boon to the Banner. Gail Wynand was away, sailing his yacht

through the Indian Ocean, and Alvah Scarret was stuck for a crusade. This suited

him. Ellsworth Toohey needed to make no suggestions; Scarret rose to the

occasion all by himself.

He wrote about the decline of civilization and deplored the loss of the simple

faith. He sponsored an essay contest for high-school students on "Why I Go to

Church." He ran a series of illustrated articles on "The Churches of Our

Childhood." He ran photographs of religious sculpture through the ages--the

Sphinx, gargoyles, totem poles--and gave great prominence to pictures of

Dominique’s statue, with proper captions of indignation, but omitting the

model’s name. He ran cartoons of Roark as a barbarian with bearskin and club. He

wrote many clever things about the Tower of Babel that could not reach heaven

and about Icarus who flopped on his wax wings.

Ellsworth Toohey sat back and watched. He made two minor suggestions: he found,

in the Banner’s morgue, the photograph of Roark at the opening of the Enright

House, the photograph of a man’s face in a moment of exaltation, and he had it

printed in the Banner, over the caption: "Are you happy, Mr. Superman?" He made

Stoddard open the Temple to the public while awaiting the trial of his suit. The

Temple attracted crowds of people who left obscene drawings and inscriptions on

the pedestal of Dominique’s statue.

There were a few who came, and saw, and admired the building in silence. But

they were the kind who do not take part in public issues. Austen Heller wrote a

furious article in defense of Roark and of the Temple. But he was not an

authority on architecture or religion, and the article was drowned in the storm.

Howard Roark did nothing.

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He was asked for a statement, and he received a group of reporters in his

office. He spoke without anger. He said: "I can’t tell anyone anything about my

building. If I prepared a hash of words to stuff into other people’s brains, it

would be an insult to them and to me. But I am glad you came here. I do have

something to say. I want to ask every man who is interested in this to go and

see the building, to look at it and then to use the words of his own mind, if he

cares to speak."

The Banner printed the interview as follows: "Mr. Roark, who seems to be a

publicity hound, received reporters with an air of swaggering insolence and

stated that the public mind was hash. He did not choose to talk, but he seemed

well aware of the advertising angles in the situation. All he cared about, he

explained, was to have his building seen by as many people as possible."

Roark refused to hire an attorney to represent him at the coming trial. He said

he would handle his own defense and refused to explain how he intended to handle

it, in spite of Austen Heller’s angry protests.

"Austen, there are some rules I’m perfectly willing to obey. I’m willing to wear

the kind of clothes everybody wears, to eat the same food and use the same

subways. But there are some things which I can’t do their way--and this is one

of them."

"What do you know about courtrooms and law? He’s going to win."

"To win what?"

"His case."

"Is the case of any importance? There’s nothing I can do to stop him from

touching the building. He owns it. He can blast it off the face of the earth or

make a glue factory out of it. He can do it whether I win that suit or lose it."

"But he’ll take your money to do it with."

"Yes. He might take my money."

Steven Mallory made no comment on anything. But his face looked as it had looked

on the night Roark met him for the first time.

"Steve, talk about it, if it will make it easier for you," Roark said to him one

evening.

"There’s nothing to talk about," Mallory answered indifferently. "I told you I

didn’t think they’d let you survive."

"Rubbish. You have no right to be afraid for me."

"I’m not afraid for you. What would be the use? It’s something else."

Days later, sitting on the window sill in Roark’s room, looking out at the

street, Mallory said suddenly:

"Howard, do you remember what I told you about the beast I’m afraid of? I know

nothing about Ellsworth Toohey. I had never seen him before I shot at him. I had

only read what he writes. Howard, I shot at him because I think he knows

everything about that beast."

Dominique came to Roark’s room on the evening when Stoddard announced his

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lawsuit. She said nothing. She put her bag down on a table and stood removing

her gloves, slowly, as if she wished to prolong the intimacy of performing a

routine gesture here, in his room; she looked down at her fingers. Then she

raised her head. Her face looked as if she knew his worst suffering and it was

hers and she wished to bear it like this, coldly, asking no words of mitigation.

"You’re wrong," he said. They could always speak like this to each other,

continuing a conversation they had not begun. His voice was gentle. "I don’t

feel that."

"I don’t want to know."

"I want you to know. What you’re thinking is much worse than the truth. I don’t

believe it matters to me--that they’re going to destroy it. Maybe it hurts so

much that I don’t even know I’m hurt. But I don’t think so. If you want to carry

it for my sake, don’t carry more than I do. I’m not capable of suffering

completely. I never have. It goes only down to a certain point and then it

stops. As long as there is that untouched point, it’s not really pain. You

mustn’t look like that."

"Where does it stop?"

"Where I can think of nothing and feel nothing except that I designed that