In normal times, perhaps.

Far from one's native land when it is not exposed to danger, one may forget it for a few years.

But he was living now in France, and France was being obliged to defend herself against enemies wishing to overpower her.

The sight of all her people rising en masse was becoming an increasingly shameful torture for Desnoyers, making him think all the time of what he should have done in his youth, of what he had dodged.
The veterans of '70 were passing through the streets, with the green and black ribbon in their lapel, souvenirs of the privations of the Siege of Paris, and of heroic and disastrous campaigns.

The sight of these men, satisfied with their past, made him turn pale.