the sun at noon
That , at least , is how it strikes the celebrated surgeon , Professor Pieri , who is at the convent very often because he has many of his patients brought there to be operated on and nursed . The truth is that the hospital is a thoroughly modern one , which has been built as an extension of buildings that date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries . It is managed on soundly scientific principles , without the least fuss , or any ` board of trustees ' or ` committee of management , ' or any of that cumbrous administration which makes so many public hospitals as intricate as labyrinths , only to be threaded with a clue of red tape , and proportionately unpractical . There is a still and sunny garden within , surrounded by a wide and dry cloister , above which the ancient building rises only one story on the three sides of the square ; but on the fourth side , which looks towards the sun at noon , there are three stories , which have been built lately , and the hospital wards are in that wing , one above the other . On the opposite side , a door opens from the cloister to the choir of the church , which has also an outer entrance from the street , now rarely used ; for the chaplain comes and goes through the cloister , the vestibule , and the green door where the portress is . Beyond her lodge there is a wide hall , with clerestory windows and glass doors opening to the cloister and the garden ; and from this hall the hospital itself is reached by a passage through which all the patients are taken . The Mother Superior 's rooms are those above the cloister on the further side of the garden , and have three beautiful thirteenth century windows divided by pairs of slender columns , so that each window has two little arches .