In the end, seeing myself for the first time was not at all like seeing just any old rat. The experience was more personal, and more painful too. While it was easy enough to gaze at the unlovely shapes os Shunt or Peewee, it was horrible to have to look upon my own similar aspect. I realized, of course, that the intensity of this pain was in exact proportionto the enormity of my vanity, but that thought only made things worse. Not just ugly, but vain as well- which only added ridiculous to the pile. There I stood, tilted slightly, in irrefutable detail- short, thick-waisted, hairy, and chinless. Firmin: fur-man. Ridiculous. The chin, or the lack thereof, caused me special pain. It seemed to point- though in fact this nonentity was incapale of anything as bold as pointing- to a gross lack of moral fiber. And I thought the dark buling eyes gave me a revoltingly froglike air. It was, in short, a shifty, dishonest face, untrustworthy, the face of a really low character. Firmin the vermin. But the details- no chin, pointy nose, yellow teeth, etc.- were not important in themselves when compared to the overall impression of ugliness.
From them on I went to great lengths to avoid my own reflection. S I developed little mental trick: whenever this happened, instead of saying `that's me' and bursting into tears, I would say `that's him' and run away.
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