Writing Exercise

Cyrille had long been a society man. All in his aspect, was precise, though not demure. When last he had dined alone, he was not yet fourteen. That night before the morning on which he vowed gentility, he laid awake with his eyes perfectly wide. A wish enamored him, of being the sort of man who sits at the head of a table, whose gestures are theatric, whose investiture he measures by the swooning of his audience. He longed to mesmerize a crowd, as he had seen done by his father. Many a night, he gazed in secret from the shadow cast of the old grandfather clock in the hallway: the grand banquet unfurled! Toasts floated in the air like the giddiest of bubbles. Wherever they chanced to pop, a lightness prevailed. All was the merriment of laughter, and the exuberant outbursts that give character to life’s greatest excitations. At times, the very foundation of the old manor seemed to quake with the din of their festivity. Hands clapped upon their chests: nothing is so near to death as a relentless tickle. The ladies erupted and the gentleman roared. Their fists came down upon the table, and their eyes poured forth tears. Red wine spilled in floods, and down the ivory linens. Garments were heard to fray, and some merely fainted with too-little faces to express what they felt. 

Cyrille longed to be the muse of such proceedings. He would be the impresario, or nothing at all.