Atlas Shrugged Part I, Chapter 5: The Climax of the d'Anconias (Part 2) - The Money Speech

In Part 1 we went through the early years of Dagny and Francisco. The childhood races, the teenage years at the lodge, the first time everything became more than friendship. Now we pick up where things start going wrong. And by “wrong” I mean spectacularly, confusingly, heartbreakingly wrong.

The Night That Changed Everything

Francisco comes back to New York after three years running d’Anconia Copper. He calls Dagny. They have dinner at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel. Everything seems fine on the surface. He is still brilliant, still magnetic. But something is off.

He asks her a strange question: would she leave Taggart Transcontinental and let it collapse when her brother takes over? Dagny compares this to asking her to commit suicide. He goes quiet.

That night, she wakes up and finds him lying next to her, eyes open, looking like a man enduring unbearable pain. He grabs onto her and says “I can’t give it up.” Give up what? “You.” And everything else. He begs her to help him refuse something. Refuse what? He won’t say. Someone has told him something, shown him something, and he can’t fight it even though it’s tearing him apart.

This scene is intense. Whatever Francisco has encountered, it’s powerful enough to break a man who was essentially unbreakable. He tells Dagny she is “not ready to hear it.” He asks her to forgive him and just let it go.

And then he says something that should have been a bigger red flag than it was: “Next time we meet, you will not want to see me. I will have a reason for the things I’ll do. But I can’t tell you the reason and you will be right to damn me.”

Growing up in an ex-Soviet country, I’ve seen people make impossible choices. People who had to destroy something they loved because the system left them no other option. Francisco’s torment reads differently to me than it might to most Western readers. This isn’t a man being dramatic. This is a man who has seen something about how the world works and can’t unsee it.

The Playboy Years

Then comes the transformation. Francisco becomes a tabloid fixture. Yacht parties in Valparaiso with champagne raining on the deck. A party in Algeria where he built a pavilion out of ice and had women undress as the walls melted. The kind of behavior that makes headlines and destroys reputations.

He still runs d’Anconia Copper, sort of. He swoops in for a spectacular business victory, then vanishes for a year or two, leaving the company to drift. When asked why he doesn’t care about making money, he says he already has enough for three generations of descendants to have fun.

Dagny sees him once at a reception. She asks why. He says, “I warned you.” She doesn’t try again.

Rand writes something remarkable about how Dagny handles the pain. She refuses to accept suffering as meaningful. “Pain and ugliness are never to be taken seriously.” She survives by treating Francisco’s fall as an accident, something that doesn’t belong in a rational world. She buries it and moves on. Or tries to.

But the question “why?” never goes away.

Playing Marbles on the Floor

Now we arrive at the present moment. Dagny walks to the Wayne-Falkland to confront Francisco about the San Sebastian Mines disaster. She is cold with anger, ready for a fight.

She opens the door and finds Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d’Anconia sitting on the floor, playing marbles.

I have to say, this is one of Rand’s best character moments. A man who controls a global copper empire, sitting cross-legged on the carpet in black silk pajamas, flicking semi-precious stones across the room with perfect accuracy. His childhood nickname for Dagny still comes naturally: “Hi, Slug!” And despite everything, despite years of anger and confusion, she can’t help responding: “Hi, Frisco!”

The marbles detail is not random. Rand uses them throughout the scene. Francisco’s hands keep moving, clicking the stones together, shooting them across the floor. It shows restlessness. Energy that has nowhere productive to go. Or maybe energy that is being deliberately held back.

The San Sebastian Confession

Dagny accuses him directly: you knew those mines were worthless before you started the whole project. Francisco doesn’t deny it. Instead, he takes her through the logic.

Jim Taggart and his friends invested in the San Sebastian Mines because they trusted Francisco’s name and his track record. They never bothered learning anything about copper mining themselves. They assumed Francisco would do the thinking for them and they could ride on his brain to profit.

“All their calculations rested on the premise that I wanted to make money,” Francisco tells her. “What if I didn’t?”

Then comes the real punch. The workers’ housing settlement, the one that cost eight million dollars? It’s cardboard with fancy paint. The plumbing came from Buenos Aires city dumps. The roads are cheap cement without foundations. The church will stand, he says. They’ll need it.

He spent fifteen million of his own money to wipe out forty million from Taggart Transcontinental, thirty-five million from stockholders like Jim and Orren Boyle, and hundreds of millions more in secondary consequences. And he calls it a good return on investment.

This is the moment where Dagny realizes this isn’t negligence or stupidity. This is deliberate destruction. Francisco is systematically destroying wealth, starting with his own, and he considers it a mission.

The Questions That Don’t Get Answered

Dagny begs him to fight the looters instead. His answer stops her cold: “No, my dear. It’s you that I have to fight.”

There’s a brief exchange about Richard Halley, the composer whose music they both loved. Dagny asks if Halley has written a Fifth Concerto. This is the only moment in the conversation where Francisco loses his composure. He recovers fast, but something about that question hits a nerve. He deflects.

He also drops a clue about Mrs. Gilbert Vail. The woman claims she spent New Year’s Eve with Francisco at his villa. But Francisco was actually in El Paso for the opening of the San Sebastian Line. The story is a lie. So who is Mrs. Vail covering for, and why?

The chapter ends with Francisco and Dagny at the door. He tells her he still wants her but he is “not a man who is happy enough” to act on it. She admits she wants him too, but it doesn’t matter. He tells her she has great courage and some day she’ll have enough of it.

Enough for what? He doesn’t say.

My Take

This is one of the strongest chapters in the book so far. Rand does something clever here. She gives us the villain’s confession, except he’s not the villain. Or maybe he is? The reader can’t tell yet. Francisco destroys wealth, hurts innocent people like Ellis Wyatt (who he admits will be “wiped out next”), and seems to enjoy watching the chaos. But he also radiates a strange clarity and purpose that doesn’t fit a man who has simply gone bad.

The unanswered questions pile up. Who called Francisco to New York? Why does the mention of Halley’s Fifth Concerto rattle him? What did he learn that night, years ago, that changed everything?

Rand is building a mystery, and if you’ve read ahead you know where it goes. But even knowing the answer, this chapter works because Francisco is genuinely torn. He is doing something he believes is right, and it’s costing him everything he loves. That’s not theoretical philosophy. That’s human.

Previous: Part I, Chapter 5: The Climax of the d’Anconias (Part 1)

Next: Part I, Chapter 6: The Non-Commercial (Part 1)

This is part of a chapter-by-chapter retelling of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (35th Anniversary Edition, ISBN: 978-1-101-13719-2). New posts daily.