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Sermons in Stone. Then he read aloud Toohey’s column "Sacrilege" and asked him

to state whether he had written it. Toohey replied that he had. There followed a

list of questions in erudite terms on the architectural merits of the Temple.

Toohey proved that it had none. There followed an historical review. Toohey,

speaking easily and casually, gave a brief sketch of all known civilizations and

of their outstanding religious monuments--from the Incas to the Phoenicians to

the Easter Islanders--including, whenever possible, the dates when these

monuments were begun and the dates when they were completed, the number of

workers employed in the construction and the approximate cost in modern American

dollars. The audience listened punch-drunk.

Toohey proved that the Stoddard Temple contradicted every brick, stone and

precept of history. "I have endeavored to show," he said in conclusion, "that

the two essentials of the conception of a temple are a sense of awe and a sense

of man’s humility. We have noted the gigantic proportions of religious edifices,

the soaring lines, the horrible grotesques of monster-like gods, or, later,

gargoyles. All of it tends to impress upon man his essential insignificance, to

crush him by sheer magnitude, to imbue him with that sacred terror which leads

to the meekness of virtue. The Stoddard Temple is a brazen denial of our entire

past, an insolent ’No’ flung in the face of history. I may venture a guess as to

the reason why this case has aroused such public interest. All of us have

recognized instinctively that it involves a moral issue much beyond its legal

aspects. This building is a monument to a profound hatred of humanity. It is one

man’s ego defying the most sacred impulses of all mankind, of every man on the

street, of every man in this courtroom!"

This was not a witness in court, but Ellsworth Toohey addressing a meeting--and

the reaction was inevitable: the audience burst into applause. The judge struck

his gavel and made a threat to have the courtroom cleared. Order was restored,

but not to the faces of the crowd: the faces remained lecherously

self-righteous. It was pleasant to be singled out and brought into the case as

an injured party. Three-fourths of them had never seen the Stoddard Temple.

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"Thank you, Mr. Toohey," said the attorney, faintly suggesting a bow. Then he

turned to Roark and said with delicate courtesy: "Your witness."

"No questions," said Roark.

Ellsworth Toohey raised one eyebrow and left the stand regretfully.

"Mr. Peter Keating!" called the attorney. Peter Keating’s face looked attractive

and fresh, as if he had had a good night’s sleep. He mounted the witness stand

with a collegiate sort of gusto, swinging his shoulders and arms unnecessarily.

He took the oath and answered the first questions gaily. His pose in the witness

chair was strange: his torso slumped to one side with swaggering ease, an elbow

on the chair’s arm; but his feet were planted awkwardly straight, and his knees

were pressed tight together. He never looked at Roark.

"Will you please name some of the outstanding buildings which you have designed,

Mr. Keating?" the attorney asked.

Keating began a list of impressive names; the first few came fast, the rest

slower and slower, as if he wished to be stopped; the last one died in the air,

unfinished.

"Aren’t you forgetting the most important one, Mr. Keating?" the attorney asked.

"Didn’t you design the Cosmo-Slotnick Building?"

"Yes," whispered Keating.

"Now, Mr. Keating, you attended the Stanton Institute of Technology at the same

period as Mr. Roark?"

"Yes."

"What can you tell us about Mr. Roark’s record there?"

"He was expelled."

"He was expelled because he was unable to live up to the Institute’s high

standard of requirements?"

"Yes. Yes, that was it."

The judge glanced at Roark. A lawyer would have objected to this testimony as

irrelevant. Roark made no objection.

"At that time, did you think that he showed any talent for the profession of

architecture?"

"No."

"Will you please speak a little louder, Mr. Keating?"

"I didn’t...think he had any talent."

Queer things were happening to Keating’s verbal punctuation: some words came out

crisply, as if he dropped an exclamation point after each; others ran together,

as if he would not stop to let himself hear them. He did not look at the

attorney. He kept his eyes on the audience. At times, he looked like a boy out

on a lark, a boy who has just drawn a mustache on the face of a beautiful girl

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on a subway toothpaste ad. Then he looked as if he were begging the crowd for

support--as if he were on trial before them.

"At one time you employed Mr. Roark in your office?"

"Yes."

"And you found yourself forced to fire him?"

"Yes...we did."

"For incompetence?"

"Yes."

"What can you tell us about Mr. Roark’s subsequent career?"

"Well, you know, ’career’ is a relative term. In volume of achievement any

draftsman in our office has done more than Mr. Roark. We don’t call one or two

buildings a career. We put up that many every month or so."

"Will you give us your professional opinion of his work?"

"Well, I think it’s immature. Very startling, even quite interesting at times,

but essentially--adolescent."

"Then Mr. Roark cannot be called a full-fledged architect?"

"Not in the sense in which we speak of Mr. Ralston Holcombe, Mr. Guy Francon,

Mr. Gordon Prescott--no. But, of course, I want to be fair. I think Mr. Roark

had definite potentialities, particularly in problems of pure engineering. He

could have made something of himself. I’ve tried to talk to him about it--I’ve

tried to help him--I honestly did. But it was like talking to one of his pet

pieces of reinforced concrete. I knew that he’d come to something like this. I

wasn’t surprised when I heard that a client had had to sue him at last."

"What can you tell us about Mr. Roark’s attitude toward clients?"

"Well, that’s the point. That’s the whole point. He didn’t care what the clients

thought or wished, what anyone in the world thought or wished. He didn’t even

understand how other architects could care. He wouldn’t even give you that, not

even understanding, not even enough to...respect you a little just the same. I

don’t see what’s so wrong with trying to please people. I don’t see what’s wrong

with wanting to be friendly and liked and popular. Why is that a crime? Why

should anyone sneer at you for that, sneer all the time, all the time, day and

night, not giving you a moment’s peace, like the Chinese water torture, you know

where they drop water on your skull drop by drop?"

People in the audience began to realize that Peter Keating was drunk. The

attorney frowned; the testimony had been rehearsed; but it was getting off the

rails.

"Well, now, Mr. Keating, perhaps you’d better tell us about Mr. Roark’s views on

architecture."

"I’ll tell you, if you want to know. He thinks you should take your shoes off

and kneel, when you speak of architecture. That’s what he thinks. Now why should

you? Why? It’s a business like any other, isn’t it? What’s so damn sacred about

it? Why do we have to be all keyed up? We’re only human. We want to make a

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living. Why can’t things be simple and easy? Why do we have to be some sort of

God-damn heroes?"

"Now, now, Mr. Keating, I think we’re straying slightly from the subject.

We’re..."

"No, we’re not. I know what I’m talking about. You do, too. They all do. Every

one of them here. I’m talking about the Temple. Don’t you see? Why pick a fiend

to build a temple? Only a very human sort of man should be chosen to do that. A

man who understands...and forgives. A man who forgives...That’s what you go to

church for--to be...forgiven..."

"Yes, Mr. Keating, but speaking of Mr. Roark..."

"Well, what about Mr. Roark? He’s no architect. He’s no good. Why should I be

afraid to say that he’s no good? Why are you all afraid of him?"

"Mr. Keating, if you’re not well and wish to be dismissed...?" Keating looked at

him, as if awakening. He tried to control himself. After a while he said, his

voice flat, resigned:

"No. I’m all right. I’ll tell you anything you want. What is it you want me to

say?"

"Will you tell us--in professional terms--your opinion of the structure known as

the Stoddard Temple?"

"Yes. Sure. The Stoddard Temple...The Stoddard Temple has an improperly

articulated plan, which leads to spatial confusion. There is no balance of

masses. It lacks a sense of symmetry. Its proportions are inept." He spoke in a

monotone. His neck was stiff; he was making an effort not to let it drop

forward. "It’s out of scale. It contradicts the elementary principles of

composition. The total effect is that of..."

"Louder please, Mr. Keating."

"The total effect is that of crudeness and architectural illiteracy. It

shows...it shows no sense of structure, no instinct for beauty, no creative

imagination, no..." he closed his eyes, "...artistic integrity..."

"Thank you, Mr. Keating. That is all."

The attorney turned to Roark and said nervously:

"Your witness."

"No questions," said Roark.

This concluded the first day of the trial.

That evening Mallory, Heller, Mike, Enright and Lansing gathered in Roark’s

room. They had not consulted one another, but they all came, prompted by the

same feeling. They did not talk about the trial, but there was no strain and no

conscious avoidance of the subject. Roark sat on his drafting table and talked

to them about the future of the plastics industry. Mallory laughed aloud

suddenly, without apparent reason. "What’s the matter, Steve?" Roark asked. "I

just thought...Howard, we all came here to help you, to cheer you up. But it’s

you who’re helping us, instead. You’re supporting your supporters, Howard."

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That evening, Peter Keating lay half-stretched across a table in a speakeasy,

one arm extending along the table top, his face on his arm.

In the next two days a succession of witnesses testified for the plaintiff.

Every examination began with questions that brought out the professional

achievements of the witness. The attorney gave them leads like an expert press

agent. Austen Heller remarked that architects must have fought for the privilege

of being called to the witness stand, since it was the grandest spree of

publicity in a usually silent profession.

None of the witnesses looked at Roark. He looked at them. He listened to the

testimony. He said: "No questions," to each one.

Ralston Holcombe on the stand, with flowing tie and gold-headed cane, had the

appearance of a Grand Duke or a beer-garden composer. His testimony was long and

scholarly, but it came down to:

"It’s all nonsense. It’s all a lot of childish nonsense. I can’t say that I feel

much sympathy for Mr. Hopton Stoddard. He should have known better. It is a

scientific fact that the architectural style of the Renaissance is the only one

appropriate to our age. If our best people, like Mr. Stoddard, refuse to

recognize this, what can you expect from all sorts of parvenus, would-be

architects and the rabble in general? It has been proved that Renaissance is the

only permissible style for all churches, temples and cathedrals. What about Sir

Christopher Wren? Just laugh that off. And remember the greatest religious

monument of all time--St. Peter’s in Rome. Are you going to improve upon St.

Peter’s? And if Mr. Stoddard did not specifically insist on Renaissance, he got

just exactly what he deserved. It serves him jolly well right." Gordon L.

Prescott wore a turtleneck sweater under a plaid coat, tweed trousers and heavy

golf shoes.

"The correlation of the transcendental to the purely spatial in the building

under discussion is entirely screwy," he said. "If we take the horizontal as the

one-dimensional, the vertical as the two-dimensional, the diagonal as the

three-dimensional, and the interpenetration of spaces as the

fourth-dimensional--architecture being a fourth-dimensional art--we can see

quite simply that this building is homaloidal, or--in the language of the

layman--flat. The flowing life which comes from the sense of order in chaos, or,

if you prefer, from unity in diversity, as well as vice versa, which is the

realization of the contradiction inherent in architecture, is here absolutely

absent. I am really trying to express myself as clearly as I can, but it is

impossible to present a dialectic state by covering it up with an old fig leaf

of logic just for the sake of the mentally lazy layman."

John Erik Snyte testified modestly and unobtrusively that he had employed Roark

in his office, that Roark had been an unreliable, disloyal and unscrupulous

employee, and that Roark had started his career by stealing a client from him.

On the fourth day of the trial the plaintiff’s attorney called his last witness.

"Miss Dominique Francon," he announced solemnly.

Mallory gasped, but no one heard it; Mike’s hand clamped down on his wrist and

made him keep still.

The attorney had reserved Dominique for his climax, partly because he expected a

great deal from her, and partly because he was worried; she was the only

unrehearsed witness; she had refused to be coached. She had never mentioned the

Stoddard Temple in her column; but he had looked up her earlier writings on

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Roark; and Ellsworth Toohey had advised him to call her.

Dominique stood for a moment on the elevation of the witness stand, looking