Atlas Shrugged [265]
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-as, I think, he will.
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns-or dollars. Take your choice-there is no other-and your time is running out."
Francisco had not glanced at Rearden once while speaking; but the moment he finished, his eyes went straight to Rearden's face. Rearden stood motionless, seeing nothing but Francisco d'Anconia across the moving figures and angry voices between them.
There were people who had listened, but now hurried away, and people who said, "It's horrible!"-"It's not true!"-"How vicious and selfish!"-saying it loudly and guardedly at once, as if wishing that their neighbors would hear them, but hoping that Francisco would not.
"Senor d'Anconia," declared the woman with the earrings, "I don't agree with you!"
"If you can refute a single sentence I uttered, madame, I shall hear it gratefully."
"Oh, I can't answer you. I don't have any answers, my mind doesn't work that way, but I don't feel that you're right, so I know that you're wrong."
"How do you know it?"
"I feel it. I don't go by my head, but by my heart. You might be good at logic, but you're heartless."
"Madame, when we'll see men dying of starvation around us, your heart won't be of any earthly use to save them. And I'm heartless enough to say that when you'll scream, 'But I didn't know it!'-you will not be forgiven."
The woman turned away, a shudder running through the flesh of her cheeks and through the angry tremor of her voice: "Well, it's certainly a funny way to talk at a party!"
A portly man with evasive eyes said loudly, his tone of forced cheerfulness suggesting that his sole concern in any issue was not to let it become unpleasant, "If this is the way you feel about money, senor, I think I'm darn glad that I've got a goodly piece of d'Anconia Copper stock."
Francisco said gravely, "I suggest that you think twice, sir."
Rearden started toward him-and Francisco, who had not seemed to look in his direction, moved to meet him at once, as if the others had never existed.
"Hello," said Rearden simply, easily, as to a childhood friend; he was smiling.
He saw his own smile reflected in Francisco's face. "Hello."
"I want to speak to you."
"To whom do you think I've been speaking for the last quarter of an hour?"
Rearden chuckled, in the manner of acknowledging an opponent's round. "I didn't think you had noticed me."
"I noticed, when I came in, that you were one of the only two persons in this room who were glad to see me."
"Aren't you being presumptuous?"
"No-grateful."
"Who was the other person glad to see you?"
Francisco shrugged and said lightly, "A woman."
Rearden noticed that Francisco had led him aside, away from the group, in so skillfully natural a manner that neither he nor the others had known it was being done intentionally.
"I didn't expect to find you here," said Francisco. "You shouldn't have come to this party."
"Why not?"
"May I ask what made you come?"
"My wife was anxious to accept the invitation."
"Forgive me if I put it in such form, but it would have been more proper and less dangerous if she had asked you to take