One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himselftransformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.

He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he couldsee his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiffsections.The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide offany moment.

His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him,waved about helplessly as he looked.

"What's happened to me? " hethought. It wasn't a dream. His room, a proper human room although a little toosmall, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls.

A collection of textile samples lay spread out on the table - Samsa was atravelling salesman - and above it there hung a picture that he had recentlycut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame.

It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright,raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards theviewer.

Gregor then turned to look out the window at the dull weather. Drops of raincould be heard hitting the pane, which made him feel quite sad.

"How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all thisnonsense", he thought, but that was something he was unable to do becausehe was used to sleeping on his right, and in his present state couldn't getinto that position.

However hard he threw himself onto his right, he always rolled back to wherehe was.

He must have tried it a hundred times, shut his eyes so that he wouldn'thave to look at the floundering legs, and only stopped when he began to feel amild, dull pain there that he had never felt before.

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