Probably no man of intelligence in Italy was further from understanding Mario’s political aims, or caring to understand them, than Tarsis. And no one understood them better than the King; he knew that in the leader of the New Democracy he had a stalwart friend, law and order a genuine champion. Mario’s party had frankly accepted the monarchy, convinced that the industrial reforms Italy needed could be accomplished by improving rather than pulling down the existing form of government. The duty on breadstuffs had been so high that many thousands of mouths found it difficult to get bread. In the past few weeks there had been outbreaks of the people. In towns of middle and southern Italy and Sicily mobs of men and women had busied themselves taking food wherever they could find it. This imitation of the fowls of the air and the beasts of the forest worked well enough for the feeders until the soldiers arrived and the bullets began to whistle. One day the King, who had never relished the campaign against his hungry subjects, issued a decree reducing the duty on breadstuffs. It was submitted to Parliament and passed without speeches for or against. There was a notion in the heads of the law-makers that if some measure of relief was not adopted the full stomachs might not be able to hold the empty ones at bay. Mario Forza had much to do with inculcating that idea. He proved himself the dangerous man his foes pronounced him by pointing out the peril and the means of averting it. Upon his motion the Chamber remitted taxes on many things that the people needed to support life, and planned public works to give the idle an opportunity to earn food. It voted 100,000 liras to aid the poor, and then, feeling that it had smothered the volcano, adjourned for a fortnight to attend the Turin exposition, leaving the throne and the cabinet to keep an eye on the crater. It was at this juncture that the King chose to visit the Barbiondi palace. He had shown his sympathy with the suffering by adding to the Parliamentary fund for their relief 150,000 liras from his private purse. Long before the hour for his appearance the Milanese began to assemble, for the most part, it is believed, bent upon giving him an evidence of good will. They gathered about the gates of the palace and along Corso Venezia, through which the royal equipage was to pass. Soon the halls and reception chambers of the house pulsated with the voices and laughter, the rustle and movement, that attend the arrival of guests. A line of carriages set them down at the portico.