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? ” he thought. It wasn’t a dream.

His room, a proper human room although a little too small, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls.

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