The night had passed in quiet along the frontier, and in the morning it seemed as if the 2nd of August was to be as monotonous as had been the 1st. General Gneisenau and old von Pestel, now a lieutenant-colonel, had made a reconnaissance from the “Bellevue” and had come back to a leisurely breakfast. The soldiers in the barrackyards and in the several posts on the environs of the town, slept and smoked and gossiped, their arms stacked as usual; the officers sat under the trees drinking their Rhine wine, and the whole place seemed oppressed by the drowsiness of a fervently hot day. [Illustration: SAARBRÜCK.] But the torpor was soon to give place to alert activity. At ten a.m. Saarbrück awoke at the announcement sent in from the outposts that the enemy was at last advancing. The two companies in front of Saarbrück moved at once into the line of defence. The company from St. Johann hurried by at the double to occupy the “Red House.” Major von Horn hastened to strengthen the post on the Winterberg, which was most imminently threatened. Captain Gründer occupied the Löwenberg, and moved with Leydecker’s company and the rest of his own out to St. Arnual, where his rifle fire and the fire of two guns sent to him from Raschpfuhl gave a warm reception to the enemy debouching from the Stiftswald. As some English spectators hurried up to the “Bellevue” height, there rattled past them at a sharp trot a couple of guns which the general had ordered to be put in position on the Exercise Platz. The battery chief waved his hand cheerily as he galloped to the front. From the “Bellevue” one looked upon an imposing spectacle. Three roads, crossing the plain from the wooded heights on the French side of the frontier, converge on Saarbrück. One of these is the great post-road from Forbach. Another, starting from the village of Spicheren, winds tortuously down the right flank of the precipitous “Rothe Berg”--the “Red Crag”--crosses the hollow and enters Saarbrück between the Reppertsberg and the Nussberg. The third, further to the east, is a mere green track of considerable breadth, which falls abruptly down into the valley by the poplar-clad slope from the plateau towards St. Arnual.