At the end of the peristyle was generally the kitchen. Supposing the house was large, it did not end with the peristyle, and the centre thereof was not in that case a garden, but might be perhaps adorned with a fountain, or basin for fish; and at its end, exactly opposite to the tablinum, was generally another eating room, on either side of which were bed rooms, and perhaps a picture saloon, or _pinatheca_.[2] These apartments communicated again with a square or oblong space, usually adorned on three sides with a colonnade like the peristyle, and very much resembling the peristyle, only longer. This was the proper _viridarium_ or garden, being usually adorned with a fountain, or statues, and a profusion of gay flowers: at its extreme end was the gardener's house; on either side beneath the colonnade were sometimes, if the size of the family required it, additional rooms. [Footnote 2: In the stately palaces of Rome, the pinatheca usually communicated with the atrium.] At Pompeii, a second or third story was rarely of importance, being built only above a small part of the house, and containing rooms for the slaves; differing in this respect from the more magnificent edifices of Rome, which generally contained the principal eating room (or _coenaculum_) on the second floor. The apartments themselves were ordinarily of small size: for in those delightful climes they received any extraordinary number of visiters in the peristyle (or portico,) the hall, or the garden; and even their banquet rooms, however elaborately adorned and carefully selected in point of aspect, were of diminutive proportions; for the intellectual ancients, being fond of society, not of crowds, rarely feasted more than nine at a time, so that large dinner rooms were not so necessary with them as with us.[3] But the suite of rooms seen at once from the entrance must have had a very imposing effect; you beheld at once the hall richly paved and painted--the tablinum--the graceful peristyle, and (if the house extended farther) the opposite banquet room and the garden, which closed the view with some gushing fount or marble statue. [Footnote 3: When they entertained very large parties, the feast was usually served in the hall.]