[In the following brief review, Loving discusses Neumann's The Rebels as historical fiction.]

In The Devil, King Haber, and The Rebels Alfred Neumann showed with what success psychological values can be applied to historical characters and events. In each one of these books we note that the author has proceeded on the assumption—an anathema, I imagine, to most professional historians—that the arcanum of facts must not be too reverently searched or worshiped. To put it another way: history-writing and fiction meet at that focal point where both the historian and the novelist begin to revise and color the available data, which has been, of course, already tainted by the dust of time. Both go in quest, not of “ultimate truth,” but of sound values. In modern philosophy these values are called percepta; nor need we think that they are themselves apprehensions of pure reality; for there are, it is conceded, many veils between our ordinary perceptions and the thing we are seeking, commonly called the truth.

Alfred Neumann in the present book takes up the revolution of the Carbonari, as in The Rebels, and rewrites it for us from the viewpoint of Guerra, the leader. The story begins with Guerra's release from the island of Elba. It is both effective and plausible, and the dramatic crises—of which there are many—are not at all forced. They occur naturally in the flow of the tale, which is thick with intrigue, dark plots, the scheming of prelates and aristocrats, love and lust, the shedding of blood, and the half-finished talk and action of conspirators who scarcely dare trust one another.

Guerra is in love with the Princess Maria, who is the mistress of the Grand Duke, the enemy of United Italy. He is also sinisterly attached to his own sister, who marries the head of the Radical Party. In the end he is shot when about to address his faithful followers in the piazza at Rome. From a balcony a blind man exclaims: “Why—why isn't he speaking?” The novel is full of just such dramatic touches. And it is this sort of literary device that best gives us the clue to the difference between the ordinary kind of history and the historical novel that perhaps justifies itself by the urgency of its inner truth.