Despite the archduke's express wishes, it was impossible to cover the distance between padua and trent in one day. Suleiman tried his hardest to obey the mahout's urgent commands, indeed the mahout seemed determined to take it out on him for the failure of a business that had begun so well and ended so badly, but elephants, even those who weigh four tons, also have their physical limits. In fact, it all turned out for the best. Instead of reaching their destination in the half-light of evening, in near-darkness, they arrived in trent at midday, when they were greeted by people in the streets and by applause. The sky was still covered from horizon to horizon by what seemed like solid cloud, but it wasn't raining. The convoy's meteorologists, who are, by vocation, the majority, were unanimous, It's going to snow, they said, and hard. When the cortège reached trent, a surprise was awaiting them in the square outside the cathedral of saint vigilius. In the exact center of that square stood a more or less half-life-size statue of an elephant, or, rather, a construction made out of planks that bore every appearance of having been hastily nailed together, with little attempt to achieve anatomical exactitude, although they had included a raised trunk and a pair of tusks, the ivory of which was represented by a lick of white paint, this, one assumes, was intended to represent suleiman, well, it must have, since no other animal of his species was expected in that part of the country nor was there any record of another elephant having visited trent, not at least in the recent past. When the archduke saw the elephantoid figure, he trembled. His worst fears were confirmed, news of the miracle had clearly arrived in trent, and the religious authorities of the city, which had already benefited, materially and spiritually, from the fact that the council was being held within its walls, had found confirmation of, how shall we put it, a kind of shared sanctity with padua and the basilica of saint anthony, and had decided to demonstrate this by erecting a hasty construction representing the miracle-working creature in front of the very cathedral where the cardinals, bishops and theologians had been meeting now for years. When he took a closer look, the archduke noticed that there were large holes in the elephant's back, rather like trapdoors, which immediately made him think of the celebrated trojan horse, although it was perfectly clear that there wouldn't be room in the statue's belly for even a squadron of children, unless they were lilliputians, but that was impossible, because the word hadn't even been invented yet. To clarify the situation, the anxious archduke ordered his steward to go and find out what the devil that worrying, cobbled-together monstrosity was doing there. The steward went and returned. There was no reason to be alarmed. The elephant had been created in order to celebrate maximilian of austria's visit to the city of trent, and its other purpose, and this was true, was as a frame for the fireworks that would erupt from the wooden carcass when darkness fell. The archduke gave a sigh of relief, the elephant's actions were obviously deemed to be of little importance in trent, apart, perhaps, from providing an object capable of being burned to a cinder, for there was a strong likelihood that the fuses attached to the fireworks would ignite the wood, providing spectators with a finale that would, many years later, merit the adjective wagnerian. And so it was. After a storm of colors, in which the yellow of sodium, the red of calcium, the green of copper, the blue of potassium, the white of magnesium and the gold of iron all performed miracles, in which stars, fountains, slow-burning candles and cascades of lights poured out of the elephant as if from an inexhaustible cornucopia, the celebrations ended with a huge bonfire around which many of trent's inhabitants would take the opportunity to stand and warm their hands, while suleiman, in the shelter of a lean-to built for the purpose, was finishing off his second bundle of forage. The fire was gradually becoming a glowing heap of embers, but this did not last long in the cold, and the embers rapidly turned into ashes, although by then, once the main spectacle was over, the archduke and the archduchess had both retired to bed. The snow began to fall.