ss账号

In the U.S., there are gated communities. Paris has its own versions– these private streets, which abound in the 16th arrondissement. Usually you have to know a code to get in. One of them, the Villa Montmorency in the southern half, Auteuil, even has full-time guards who patrol the streets and monitor the gates. Inside, behind the screen of trees, is one of the very few (or the only?) places in Paris where large private one-family houses exist with gardens and even swimming pools.  

As you can imagine, the Villa Montmorency been a favorite of the rich and famous for many years. Céline Dion, Laurent Dassault (airplanes), Wladimir Taittinger (champagne), Arnaud Lagardère (Lagardère Group, a giant international media company that owns, among many others, the Hachette group), Alain Afflelou (glasses), Tarak Ben Ammar (movies), Carla Bruni (Sarkozy's wife), 旋风加速器免费加速器app下载 (soccer), Xavier Niel (internet), Sylvie Vartan (singer famous in the 60s and 70s), Carole Bouquet (movie star), all live there behind the gates, enjoying the privacy. Servants and "personnel" are not allowed to drive on the streets of the Villa; they have to go in the back way, and every dwelling must be at least 150 square meters, with no subletting allowed. It's a "preserve of the rich that makes le tout-Paris daydream."

There never used to be houses for sale there, back when the French economy was booming, but now there are plenty–if you want to pay €8 to €50 million, and are prepared for France's taxes. Apparently, not enough people are. The rich foreigners who might buy in central Paris don't want to live so far away (apparently the only foreigners are "a Chinese and a Russian," Ibrahimovich, plus an Indonesian who bought last year), and the "franco-Français" are leery of the image of a "ghetto for the rich." Possibly another reason is the giant public housing project going up next door, whose inhabitants will be able to see down into it.

A lot of important people live in Paris, and that means lots of cops. The especially unlucky ones get assigned this kind of duty. 

At the end of the summer, I lost a good friend. It was a shock– I didn't even know he was ill till the day of his death. I have had to go to my share of funerals in France, but this was the first time it has been for a close friend. I flew to his family's home city for the funeral, and for the first time, I went with the family to the graveyard. 

The graveyards in France look very different from American ones, which no doubt were modeled after British. In the U.S., cemeteries are full of traditionally shaped tombstones– and these days, often of bronze or stone plaques set into the ground–and always have grass, trees and flowers. French graveyards, though, are small cities of stone, with lanes between. Père Lachaise, in Paris (below), is an unusually beautiful one. The graves are very often like this: little "houses" or chapels, or more commonly, large family graves in which one generation after another is buried under stone.

Arriving at the ancient chapel where the service was held, I saw the family standing outside, greeting everyone. They looked shell-shocked, but managed wan smiles. The coffin arrived in a hearse, and was carried by six pallbearers in black into the small church. We filed in after it.

Everyone at the funeral was dressed in black, even the children– there were several small ones, sitting solemnly in the front. After a beautiful short service, the priest led the pallbearers, carrying the coffin, and the family out of the church. We all walked slowly behind the family to the nearby graveyard. In the old days, the pallbearers would have walked first. Now, they put the coffin into a hearse for the short distance. As we walked, passersby stopped their chatter and stood aside respectfully. 

We came to the old graveyard on a hill. It was a peaceful place with a beautiful view, but crowded with high stone tombs. We filed through the narrow paths to a monument with the family name on it. Two workers in black with crowbars, who had been waiting there, then pried off the stone slab from the front of the tomb. Inside and underneath the stone cover, a small black caveau, or vault, opened up, with at least ten coffins of various eras piled inside like bricks below the path. It was so odd to think of them just sitting there for generation after generation.

The priest said a last blessing. Last year he had officiated at a family wedding. He had been so ill then that everyone had been worried about his health, and here he was burying his younger friend instead. The pallbearers now carried the casket to the tomb. One of the workmen climbed inside and gently guided it as it slid on top of the other family coffins. Then he climbed out again, and the stone front was put back and sealed up. My friend was in his final resting place. It seemed so chilly, dark, and unfinished.

It was oddly unsatisfying. I realized I had never before seen a funeral where the coffin was not put into the ground, with the family around. In most of the U.S. funerals I've been to, it is also traditional for people to take a handful of earth and throw it on top of the coffin to say goodbye.  

My friend's daughter came to stand beside me. She put her hand on my arm and said, "It is strange for you, isn't it? From the movies, I know that Americans put the coffin right into the earth."

I nodded, afraid to talk.  My friend, a lover of history, had wanted to be buried in that graveyard where so many of his ancestors lay. His daughter told me that, in spite of the family name on it, the grave did not belong to close relatives, but to distant cousins who, on learning of the sudden death, had offered a place in their family vault. The graveyard was full and otherwise unavailable, so it was a great kindness. "No one does that kind of thing," someone told me later. "It shows you how much everyone loved him."

火箭加速器官方下载 - 亚风软件站:2021-10-21 · 火箭加速器电脑版是手机加速软件“火箭加速器app”的桌面pc版本，由安卓模拟器而生成，简单的一键直连，任何小白用户都能快速使用，加上支持多个线路自由切换，众及通过端到端的加密链路，可众有效保证数据传输过程中的安全，是用户最好的加速软件，欢迎免费下载。