In the film classic High Noon, a small town in the American West nervously awaits the return of Frank Miller and his gang. While the good burghers debate how to greet the returning outlaws shops are shuttered and the streets empty.
Two days before England is to play its second World Cup match, against Romania in Toulouse, and nearly a week before the June 26th match with Colombia in Lens, these two towns, at the southern and northern ends of France, are waiting for their High Noon - not Frank Miller's boys but les hooligans anglais.
"We saw what they did in Marseille," said Dominique Baudis, the Mayor of Toulouse, when he announced the unprecedented decision to cancel the fete de la musique tomorrow night. The series of outdoor concerts was started by the former minister of culture, Jack Lang, a decade ago and takes place in large French towns every June 21st.
"On account of what we saw I think it would be much too risky to hold the music festival," Mr Baudis said. "I don't want to expose our young people to aggression by hundreds of provocateurs looking for a fight. I don't want to give the hooligans the means to provoke pitched battles. That's what they like, big crowds into which they can throw themselves with extreme violence."
French radio and television now refer to "les hordes des supporters britanniques" in a tone befitting the sack of Rome by Goths and Visigoths. At a time when many fear the rise of the extreme right National Front, French people were horrified that some of the English hooligans gave Nazi salutes and boasted they were "proud to be white" in Marseille.
Almost equally sickening were reports that most of the 60 arrested were too drunk to spell their own names. The memory of the Heysel stadium, where 39 people were killed in 1985, hovers like a bad dream in the back of every French official's mind.
Little wonder that Toulouse and Lens are hunkering down and waiting for the English matches to be over. Mr Baudis asked for two additional companies of CRS riot police, 160 more men, in addition to the 1,300 already deployed in his city.
As soon as the Marseille match ended Toulouse police began watching the trains arriving at the Gare de Matabiau in the hope of spotting troublemakers early. All over France, new restrictions have been put on the sale and consumption of alcohol near stadiums.
Toulouse's cafe and restaurant owners are furious because they've been ordered to close at 11 p.m. - three hours early - for five nights to deprive the British "hordes" of drink. Some cafes prefer to risk the 10,000 franc (£1,190) fine rather than lose 30 per cent of an evening's income.
It was pleasant for Toulousains without tickets to lie on the grassy banks of the Garonne river and watch matches on a giant screen. The screen was taken down before les hooligans arrived, to prevent a repeat of the fights between English and Tunisian fans on Monday at Marseille's Prado Beach.
"We must avoid all gathering of crowds," Mayor Baudis explained. "It would be too tempting for the hooligans, and they wouldn't miss the opportunity."
Lens has taken similar measures. Because the small town south of Lille is so quickly reached from England, its inhabitants are particularly fearful. Its giant screen has also been dismantled, and the mayor of Lens cancelled a Jimmy Cliff concert the night before the June 26th match. The BBC has been banned from broadcasting live from an outdoor platform.
Lest there be any doubt about who might cause trouble, the prosecutor's office announced that an English-speaking court clerk has been hired for the England-Romania match. All seven of Lens's judges will be on duty on the 26th, in case there is a sudden rush of assault cases.
When Jean-Claude Gaudin, the mayor of Marseille, demanded indignantly that the city be reimbursed for the hooligans' destruction, he placed full blame on the English.
"They say that people from the neighbourhoods went down to the centre of town to help the Tunisians. It's not true," Mr Gaudin said. "It was unbearable to see these hooligans acting as if they had conquered territory, destroying property and striking people, including policemen.
"I am very angry. It wrecked our celebration. It wrecked the image that we wanted to give of our city as a fraternal, generous place."
According to a more careful version of the Marseille riots, English fans were responsible for the initial incidents, throwing beer bottles at police and burning a Tunisian flag. But in the hours that followed, Le Monde later reported: "The violence changed sides. Judging from the evidence, the most serious acts were those committed by Marseillais."
So, we now learn, much of the damage was the result of the urban violence that ferments in slums around French cities.
Most French media refused to acknowledge that young French people, many of them of North African origin, were also responsible for the destruction in Marseille. French television repeatedly broadcast videotape of the attack on an Englishman by young Marseillais, but the commentary gave the impression it was Englishmen attacking a Tunisian.
The result of this biased coverage, Le Monde warned, is that in Toulouse and Lens "every English supporter risks being seen as a potential hooligan."
The hard-core hooligans have won, the newspaper concluded: France is afraid of them.
