It was towards the end of a very hot summer, and all the human population of that crowded square of the great city had spent the first half of the night in the streets. Either that, or in leaning halfway out of their windows to get a breath of fresh air. Now that sunrise was again so near at hand, however, and the breeze from the sea had done so much to make the world more comfortable to live in, the closely-built "hotels" and tenement houses were all asleep. The former were mostly of the sort that sell lager beer and other things in the basement, and the latter were just the kind of places in which men and women ought not to live.