In those pleasant early days, while as yet there were no graves on the Spicheren Berg and no shattered men lying in the Saarbrück hospitals or littering the platform of the Saarbrück railway station on the blood-stained stretchers, the opposing piquets and videttes formed quite the diversion of the Saarbrück people. After the day’s work was over, the labouring folk used regularly to stroll up to the “Bellevue” to watch, as they drank their beer, the dropping fire, fain to see a German marksman proving his skill by hitting a Frenchman. Both sides were very cautious and few casualties occurred. As yet the Saarbrück hospital contained but two wounded Germans, both linesmen of the Hohenzollern regiment. The French were reputed to be in force in Forbach as well as on the Spicheren Berg--as many, it was said, as 15,000 men. Saarbrück, however, was in no trepidation and kept a good face with its little garrison of some 1,200 men all told. It was on one of the earliest of those early days that the midday _table d’hôte_ in the Rheinischer Hof was broken up abruptly by the report that French cannon were being moved forward to the edge of the Spicheren Berg. Immediately the drummers paraded the town, beating to arms. A company of the Hohenzollerns occupied each of the two bridges and a third marched up the hill and took up a position among the trees skirting the exercise-field. A detachment of the Uhlans rode up on to the heights, while the rest stood to their horses in the Central Platz. From the “Bellevue” the French cannon were easily discernible through the field-glass, as they were being drawn forward into position by infantrymen. Almost immediately came a puff of white smoke from the mouth of one of the guns, and a shell struck on the road close by the little beer-house, bursting as it fell. There was a stampede on the part of the civilians from their beer-mugs in the “Bellevue,” and they hurried into cover behind the crest of the height. They were only just in time. Another shell, ricocheting off the road, struck the front of the beer-house, went through the wall as if it had been paper, and burst inside, blowing out the windows and part of the roof. Four more shots were fired, and then the French withdrew their cannon. Their practice, no doubt experimental, was very good--of the six shells fired, three struck the “Bellevue.” Two rooms of it had been blown into one, the bar knocked into little pieces, the furniture wrecked, and a great gap in the floor made by a shell on its way to the cellar to cause a smash-royal among the bottles.