four o'clock
Above the clatter of the café , the music , the laughter of women and the loud chatter in Italian , the strident cries of the newsvendors rose in the great moonlit Piazza , with its huge equestrian statue of the beloved Vittorio looming dark against the steely sky . Only the _ popolo _ , the merry , brown-faced , easy-going Florentines , were still in the sun-baked city . All Society , even the richer tradesmen , and certainly all the foreign residents , had fled -- all of the latter save two , Charlie and myself . You , who know the quaint old mediæval city in the winter `` season , '' when the smart balls are given at the Corsini or the Strozzi , when the Cascine is filled with pretty women at four o'clock , and the jewellers on the Ponte Vecchio put forth their imitation cinquecento wares , would not know it in August , when beneath that fiery Tuscan sun it is as a city of the dead by day , while at night the lower classes come forth from their slums to idle , to gossip , and to enjoy the _ bel fresco _ after the heat and burden of the day . On an August night the little dark-eyed seamstress sits and enjoys her ice at the same tin-topped table at the Gambrinus where the foreign Princess has sat in April . In winter Florence is a city of the wealthy ; in summer it is given over entirely to the populace . So great is the sweltering , breathless heat , that everyone who can leave Florence in August leaves it .