However, the food was good enough, and sufficient, and the waiter and the maid-servant cheerful and bustling.  Everything felt happy-go-lucky and informal, there was no particular atmosphere.  Nobody put on any airs, because nobody in the Nardini took any notice if they did.  The little ducal dog yapped, the ducal son shouted, the waiter dropped half a dozen spoons, the old women knitted during the waits, and all went off so badly that it was quite pleasant.  Yes, Aaron preferred it to Bertolini’s, which was trying to be efficient and correct:  though not making any strenuous effort.  Still, Bertolini’s was much more up to the scratch, there was the tension of proper standards.  Whereas here at Nardini’s, nothing mattered very much.

It was November.  When he got up to his far-off room again, Aaron felt almost as if he were in a castle with the drawbridge drawn up.  Through the open window came the sound of the swelling Arno, as it rushed and rustled along over its gravel-shoals.  Lights spangled the opposite side.  Traffic sounded deep below.  The room was not really cold, for the summer sun so soaks into these thick old buildings, that it takes a month or two of winter to soak it out.—­The rain still fell.

In the morning it was still November, and the dawn came slowly.  And through the open window was the sound of the river’s rushing.  But the traffic started before dawn, with a bang and a rattle of carts, and a bang and jingle of tram-cars over the not-distant bridge.  Oh, noisy Florence!  At half-past seven Aaron rang for his coffee:  and got it at a few minutes past eight.  The signorina had told him to take his coffee in bed.

Rain was still falling.  But towards nine o’clock it lifted, and he decided to go out.  A wet, wet world.  Carriages going by, with huge wet shiny umbrellas, black and with many points, erected to cover the driver and the tail of the horse and the box-seat.  The hood of the carriage covered the fare.  Clatter-clatter through the rain.  Peasants with long wagons and slow oxen, and pale-green huge umbrellas erected for the driver to walk beneath.  Men tripping along in cloaks, shawls, umbrellas, anything, quite unconcerned.  A man loading gravel in the river-bed, in spite of the wet.  And innumerable bells ringing:  but innumerable bells.  The great soft trembling of the cathedral bell felt in all the air.

Anyhow it was a new world.  Aaron went along close to the tall thick houses, following his nose.  And suddenly he caught sight of the long slim neck of the Palazzo Vecchio up above, in the air.  And in another minute he was passing between massive buildings, out into the Piazza della Signoria.  There he stood still and looked round him in real surprise, and real joy.  The flat empty square with its stone paving was all wet.  The great buildings rose dark.  The dark, sheer front of the Palazzo Vecchio went up like a cliff, to the battlements, and the slim tower soared dark and hawk-like, crested, high above.  And at the foot of the cliff stood the great naked David, white and stripped in the wet, white against the dark, warm-dark cliff of the building—­ and near, the heavy naked men of Bandinelli.