After their arrival at the capital, the princes delivered an address to the assembled boyards, promising happiness and prosperity to the people; but as soon as the first ceremonies were concluded, the greater number gave themselves up to self-indulgence, exacted servile attentions from all about them, and practised every kind of unlawful extortion upon all those who were able to furnish supplies to the treasury. 'It was the custom that the prince never asked for anything at table. All is prepared for him; even his bread is cut into small pieces. He refuses food which does not please him. Wine is served to him in carafes of crystal. The cup-bearer (Paharnik), who is always a near relative, stands up before him holding a glass half filled.'[158] When he has finished his dinner, coffee is handed to him, and when, subsequently, he withdraws to sleep, silence is enforced, not only in the palace, but throughout the city, so that his rest (which he does not, however, always take) shall not be disturbed. At a fixed hour, when he is supposed to have risen, the bells of the city are tolled, and all is again activity. All kinds of stories, more or less authentic, are narrated concerning the effeminacy of the Phanariote rulers, such as that they were lifted about by attendants, who supported them under the armpits, so that there might be no need for them to place their feet on the ground; but although such statements may be correct in regard to some of them, there were undoubtedly princes with whose character and actions such practices were quite inconsistent. [Footnote 154: 3 Henry VII. cap. 1, and 21 Henry VIII. cap. 20.] [Footnote 155: Voda, or Domnu (Dominus), was the Roumanian designation for the prince, and Hospodar was a title of Slavonic or Russian origin (Russian, Gospodin = Lord).] [Footnote 156: P. 46.] [Footnote 157: The most authentic work on the Phanariotes is that of Marc. Philippe Zallony (Marseilles, Ant. Ricard, April 1824). That author calls himself 'the medical attendant, of several Fanariote hospodars,' and his account of the princes and their rule is sufficiently humiliating without the exaggerations and embellishments of one or two subsequent French writers. Wilkinson, whose work we have quoted, and who was 'British Consul Resident,' in 1820, at 'Bukorest,' as it was then called (he says, after one Bukor who owned the village four hundred years previously), gives a good deal of information on the same subject.] [Footnote 158: Zallony.] V.