Charles Dupin (1784–1873) and His Influence on France: The Contri ...

discord in the household from the start, and according to a document in the Varzy archives,

This explains why they were not born in Clamecy, where their father lived.

The tension between the spouses probably resulted from the father’s Jansenist—and therefore religious—persuasion, whereas the mother was a disciple of the eighteenth-century philosophers and the principles of enlightenment. On 17 fructidor an XII (30 August 1804), the father wrote to his eldest son to tell him that the mother had visited the town with the youngest son, Philippe, then aged nine. She had taken him everywhere except to visit his father, who had learned that she wanted to send Philippe to Orléans at a cost of one thousand francs a year. He wrote, ‘It is utterly stupid. It is as mad as it is wicked. She wants to be absurd, even at her own expense. I have done everything possible to have nothing with which to reproach myself’. He chose to add a spiteful comment about his second son, Charles: The great engineer is no better’ (ADN; PJ 10).

In spite of their own disharmony, the Dupins had a deep and happy influence on their two eldest sons. With just a year between them, the boys enjoyed the same childhood. The difficult climate engendered by the Revolution, their father’s sufferings, and the trouble between the parents could have had an ill effect on the two boys, but both the father and the mother were fine teachers. During their father’s imprisonment, their mother took up their instruction and