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PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL
EQUATIONS
PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL
EQUATIONS
Theory and Completely
Solved Problems
T. HILLEN
I. E. LEONARD
H. VAN ROESSEL
Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences
University of Alberta
~WILEY
A JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., PUBLICATION
Cover art: Water Wave courtesyof Brocken Inaglory: Coronal Mass Ejection courtesyofNASNSDO
and AlA, EVE, and HMI scienceteams.
Copyright © 2012 by JohnWiley & Sons,Inc.
Publishedby JohnWiley & Sons,Inc., Hoboken,New Jersey.All rights reserved.

Publishedsimultaneouslyin Canada.
No part of this publicationmay be reproduced,storedin a retrieval systemor transmittedin any form or

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Library ofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData:
Hillen, Thomas,1966-
Partial differential equations:theory and completelysolvedproblemsI ThomasHillen, I. Ed Leonard,
Henry van Roessel.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesand index.
ISBN 978-1-118-06330-9 (hardback)
1. Differential equations,Partial. I. Leonard,I. Ed., 1938- II. Van Roessel,Henry, 1956 III. Title.
QA377.H55 2012
515'.353-dc23 2012017382
Printedin the United Statesof America.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Preface Xl
PART I THEORY
1 Introduction 3
1.1 Partial Differential Equations 4
1.2 Classificationof Second-OrderLinear PDEs 7
1.3 Side Conditions 10
1.3.1 BoundaryConditionson an Interval 12
1.4 LinearPDEs 12
1.4.1 Principleof Superposition 14
1.5 Steady-Stateand Equilibrium Solutions 16
1.6 First Examplefor Separationof Variables 19
1.7 Derivationof the Diffusion Equation 24
1.7.1 BoundaryConditions 25
1.8 Derivationof the HeatEquation 26
1.9 Derivationof the Wave Equation 29
1.10 Examplesof Laplace'sEquation 33
1.11 Summary 37
1.11.1 Problemsand Notes 38
v
vi CONTENTS
2 Fourier Series 39
2.1 PiecewiseContinuousFunctions 39
2.2 Even,Odd, andPeriodicFunctions 41
2.3 OrthogonalFunctions 43
2.4 FourierSeries 48
2.4.1 FourierSine and CosineSeries 53
2.5 Convergenceof FourierSeries 56
2.5.1 Gibbs' Phenomenon 60
2.6 Operationson FourierSeries 63
2.7 Mean SquareError 74
2.8 ComplexFourierSeries 78
2.9 Summary 81
2.9.1 ProblemsandNotes 82
3 Separation of Variables 83
3.1 HomogeneousEquations 83
3.1.1 GeneralLinear HomogeneousEquations 89
3.1.2 Limitations of the Method of Separationof Variables 93
3.2 Nonhomogeneous Equations 95
3.2.1 Method of EigenfunctionExpansions 100
3.3 Summary 111
4 Sturm-Liouville Theory 115

4.1 Formulation 115
4.2 Propertiesof Sturm-LiouvilleProblems 119
4.3 EigenfunctionExpansions 127
4.4 RayleighQuotient 134
4.5 Summary 141
5 Heat, Wave, and Laplace Equations 145

5.1 One-DimensionalHeatEquation 145
5.2 Two-DimensionalHeatEquation 150
5.3 One-DimensionalWave Equation 153
5.3.1 d' Alembert'sSolution 157
5.4 Laplace'sEquation 163
5.4.1 Potentialin a Rectangle 163
5.5 Maximum Principle 167
CONTENTS vii
5.6 Two-DimensionalWave Equation 168

5.7 Eigenfunctionsin Two Dimensions 172
5.8 Summary 176
6 Polar Coordinates 179

6.1 Interior Dirichlet Problemfor a Disk 179
6.1.1 PoissonIntegralFormula 186
6.2 Vibrating Circular Membrane 188
6.3 Bessel'sEquation 191
6.3.1 SeriesSolutionsof ODEs 191
6.4 BesselFunctions 195
6.4.1 Propertiesof BesselFunctions 201
6.4.2 IntegralRepresentationof BesselFunctions 204
6.5 Fourier-BesselSeries 210
6.6 Solutionto the Vibrating MembraneProblem 214
6.7 Summary 218
7 Spherical Coordinates 221

7.1 SphericalCoordinates 221
7.1.1 Derivationof the Laplacian 222
7.2 Legendre'sEquation 224
7.3 LegendreFunctions 227
7.3.1 LegendrePolynomials 228
7.3.2 Fourier-LegendreSeries 245
7.3.3 LegendreFunctionsof the SecondKind 248
7.3.4 AssociatedLegendreFunctions 249
7.4 SphericalBesselFunctions 252
7.5 Interior Dirichlet Problemfor a Sphere 253
7.6 Summary 257
8 Fourier Transforms 261

8.1 FourierIntegrals 261
8.1.1 FourierIntegralRepresentation 261
8.1.2 Examples 264
8.1.3 FourierSine and CosineIntegralRepresentations 268
8.1.4 Proofof Fourier'sTheorem 271
viii CONTENTS
8.2 FourierTransforms 277

8.2.1 OperationalPropertiesof the FourierTransform 281
8.2.2 FourierSine and CosineTransforms 284
8.2.3 OperationalPropertiesof the Fourier Sine and Cosine
Transforms 288
8.2.4 FourierTransformsand Convolutions 289
8.2.5 FourierTransformof a GaussianFunction 294
8.3 Summary 297
9 Fourier Transform
Methods in POEs 299
9.1 The Wave Equation 300
9.1.1 d' Alembert'sSolution to the One-DimensionalWave
Equation 300
9.2 The Heat Equation 305
9.2.1 Heat Flow in an Infinite Rod 305
9.2.2 FundamentalSolutionto the HeatEquation 306
9.2.3 Error Function 308
9.2.4 HeatFlow in a Semi-infiniteRod: Dirichlet Condition 311
9.2.5 HeatFlow in a Semi-infiniteRod: NeumannCondition 317
9.3 Laplace'sEquation 319
9.3.1 Laplace'sEquationin a Half-Plane 319
9.3.2 Laplace'sEquationin a Semi-infiniteStrip 324
9.4 Summary 328
10 Method of Characteristics 331

10.1 Introductionto the Methodof Characteristics 331
10.2 GeometricInterpretation 335
10.3 d' Alembert'sSolution 344
10.4 Extensionto QuasilinearEquations 348
10.5 Summary 350
CONTENTS ix
PART II EXPLICITLY SOLVED PROBLEMS
11 Fourier Series Problems 355
12 Sturm-Liouville Problems 387
13 Heat Equation Problems 425
14 Wave Equation Problems 481
15 Laplace Equation Problems 533
16 Fourier Transform Problems 567
17 Method of Characteristics Problems 597
18 Four Sample Midterm Examinations 615

18.1 Midtenn Exam 1 615
18.2 Midtenn Exam2 619
18.3 MidtennExam3 623
18.4 MidtennExam4 626
19 Four Sample Final Examinations 631

19.1 Final Exam 1 631
19.2 Final Exam2 640
19.3 Final Exam 3 646
19.4 Final Exam4 653
Appendix A: Gamma Function 661
Bibliography 667
Index 671
PREFACE
This textbookon linearpartial differential equations(POEs)consistsof two parts. In

Part I we presentthe theory, with an emphasison completelysolvedexamplesand
intuition. In PartII we presenta collectionof exercisescontainingover 150explicitly
solvedproblemsfor linear POEsandboundaryvalueproblems.Theseproblemsare
basedon more than 30 yearsof collective experiencein teachingintroductoryPOE
coursesat severalNorth Americanuniversities.
Many excellentintroductory textbookson POEs are available, and over the years
we haveusedthe monographsby Asmar [5], Brown and Churchill [11], Haberman
[25], Keane [31], and Powers [41], to name a few. Thesebooks give a concise,
detailed, and easily accessibleintroductionto linear POEs, and provide a number
of solved examples. However, studentsalways ask for additional problemswith
detailedsolutions,andtheytendto benefitfrom a drill-like repetitionof problemsand
solutions. Herewe addressexactlythis need.While PartI presentsthe theorybehind
linear POEsand introducesmethodsand techniquesfor solving them, the problems
in Part II allow studentsto learn and repeatargumentsin hands-onexercises.The
problemsin PartII are all completelysolvedand explainedin greatdetail.
The final two chapterscontainfour samplemidterm examinationsand four sample
final examinations.Thesesampleexaminationsareactualexamsgivenbetween2004
and 2009at the University of Alberta. They providestudentswith a useful guideline
as to what to expectas well as an opportunityto test their abilities.
xi
xli PREFACE
To help studentsuse the text, we have incorporatedtwo specialfeatures. First, we

rank the problemsaccordingto their difficulty; of course,this is a subjectivetask,but
it gives a goodindicationof the level of difficulty anticipated.We use
rank 1 X for very simple problems,

rank 2 XX for simpleproblems,
rank 3 XXX for more involved problems,and
rank 4 XXXX for difficult problems.
The secondfeatureof the text is a detailedsummaryat the endof eachchapter,with

cross-references
to the solvedproblemsin PartII.
Most collegesand universitiesnow teachundergraduate coursesin boundaryvalue
problems,Fourier series,Laplacetransforms,or Fourier transforms,and then give
applicationsto PDEs. The audienceusually consistsof third-yearstudentsof math-
ematics,engineering,and other sciences. The requirementsare a solid grounding
in calculus,linear algebra,and elementarydifferential equations. Studentsneedto
be familiar with the methodsand techniquesfor solving linear ordinary differen-
tial equations(ODEs). Many ODE coursesdo not cover advancedtopics such as
Bessel'sequationor Legendre'sequation,and hencewe include a full treatmentin
the chaptersthat deal with PDE problemsin polar and sphericalcoordinates.In the
past,physicsandengineeringhavebeena major sourceof interestingPDE problems;
nowadays,problemscomefrom other areasas well, such as mathematicalbiology.
Theseproblemsaddresssuchtopicsasthe spreadof epidemics,survivalor extinction
of populations,or the invasionof healthytissueby cancercells; see,for example,[2]
or [19].
Althoughnot all PDEscanbesolvedby separationof variablesor transformmethods,
most of this text focuseson thesetwo methods. This is not surprising,since they
form the backboneof any studyof PDEs. Furthermore,the methodof characteristics
is also covered.
A choiceof topicshadto be made,andwe choseto focuson the abovethreemethods:
separationof variables,Fourier transforms,and the methodof characteristics,and
to illustrate them in greatdetail. Thus, topics not includedare Green'sfunctionsor
numericalmethods.
To preparea syllabusfor a one-semester
courseusing this text, we recommendthe
following:
Chapters1,2,3,4,5
Sections6.1, 6.2, 6.6, 6.7,7.1, 7.2, 7.4, 7.5
Chapters8, 9, 10
Acknowledgments
We would like to thankour families for their support,without which this book could
not havebeenwritten. T. H. would like to thankLisa for her help in organizingand
indexing the solvedproblemsfrom Part II. I. E. L. would like to thank Amandafor
PREFACE xiii
readingthe entire manuscriptnumeroustimes. T. H. and I. E. L. would especially

like to thank Michael Keanefor visiting Edmontonto discussan earlier versionof
the book.
We will maintaina websiteat
http://www.math.ualberta.ca/-thillen/pde-book-page.html
with supplementalmaterialanda list of errorsandtyposthat readersfind in the text.
We hopethatthis bookwill provideusefulassistance
to all thoseinterestedin learning
to solve linear PDEsandprovidea glimpseof the beautiful theorybehindthem.
THOMAS, ED, AND HENRY
Edmonton,Alberta, Canada
March 2012
PART I
THEORY
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Many physical,biological, and engineeringproblemscan be expressedmathemati-

cally by meansof partial differential equations(PDEs) togetherwith initial and/or
boundaryconditions.Partialdifferential equationsare usedin basicallyall scientific
areas:for example,Schrodinger'sequationin quantummechanics,Maxwell's equa-
tions in electrodynamics,reaction-diffusionequationsin chemistryandmathematical
biology, modelsfor spatialspreadof populationsandheatconductionproblems,and
the Black-Scholesformula for financial markets. Defining PDEs mathematically
is quite simple, since a PDE is an equationthat involves partial derivatives. The
fascinatingaspectof PDEsis that most of them can be classifiedinto threeclasses:
elliptic, parabolic, and hyperbolic. For illustrative purposes,we call thesethree
classesthe three "kingdoms." Each of thesekingdomshas a "monarch," that is, a
simple equationthat exhibits most of the propertiesof the group. Elliptic equations
are representedby Laplace's equation; parabolicequationsare representedby the
heat equation; and hyperbolic equationsare representedby the wave equation.
Theseclassificationsare defined for second-orderlinear equationsin Section 1.2.
The propertiesof thesetypes, however,carry much further, and somehigher-order
equationsexhibit "wave-like" or "diffusion-like" behavior. The study of thesethree
basicequations,which representthe threesubgroups,is the contentof this book. If
Partial Differential Equations:Theoryand CompletelySolvedProblems,First Edition. By T. Hillen. 3

I. E. Leonard.H. van Roessel
Copyright © 2012JohnWiley & Sons.Inc.
4 INTRODUCTION
you learn the methodsfor solving the wave equation,you will be able to study fluid
flow in a pipeline,andthroughSchrodinger'sequationyou will gainanunderstanding
of quantummechanics.Laplace'sequationis a prototypefor Maxwell's equationsin
electrostatics,two-dimensionalsteady-stateincompressiblefluid flow, andthe statics
of buildingsandbridges. The theory of the heatequationpreparesyou for the study
of reaction-diffusionequationsin populationbiology and for heatflow problemsin
conductingmaterials.
In this book, we deal almostexclusivelywith linear PDEs (the simplesttype), and
we use primarily one techniqueto solve them. This technique,called separation
of variables,involves reducing(i.e., simplifying) the PDEsto ordinary differential
equations(ODEs), which can then be solved using ODE methods. Generally, a
PDE will haveinfinitely many solutions. To isolatea uniquesolution, we introduce
side conditions(auxiliary conditions)that typically appearas initial conditionsand
boundaryconditions. Before we delve into the theory, we recall somebasicfacts
aboutfunctionsandtheir partial derivatives.We thenproperlydefinethe conceptsof
elliptic, parabolic,andhyperbolicPDEs.
1.1 PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
Let f : n ---t JR bea function definedon anopensetn c JR2 • Thepartialderivatives

of f(x, y) are definedas
!"'f( ) - 1· f(x + h, y) - f(x, y)

aX X,y - h--->O
1m h '
~f( ) - 1· f(x,y + h) - f(x,y)
aY x,y - h--->O
1m h '
provided that the limits exist. Thus, we differentiate with respectto one of the
variableswhile holdingthe othervariablefixed. Alternativenotations,which we use
in this text, include
af af(x,y) af ( ) _ af(x, y) - f ( )
ax (x, y) = ax = fx(x, y), ay X,y - ay - y x,y
or, evensimpler,
af
ay = fy·
Furthernotations,which we do not useherebut which canbe found in otherbooks,
include
As a rule of thumb, the more importanta conceptis in mathematics,the more nota-

tions it has.
PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS 5
For example,the gradientof a function I(x, y) is definedas
"I(x,y) = (fx(x,y),ly(x,y))
and may be denotedby
or, simply,
or in manyotherways.
Similarly, the Laplacianof a function I(x, y, z) is definedas
6.1(x, y, z) = div (grad J) = " . "I(x, y, z) = ,,2I(x, y, z)

andmay also be expressedin many different ways, for example,
or, simply,
rJ21 821 8 21
6.1 = 8x2 + 8y2 + 8z2·
Hence, partial derivativesare quite important! In general, a partial differential
equationfor an unknown function u(x, y), u(x, y, z), or u(x, y, z, t), ... can be
written as a function:
F(x, y, u, ux, uy, U xx, uxy, U yy, uxxx, ... ) = 0.
We now define someterminology. In the equationsabove,u (the unknownfunction)

is referredto as a dependentvariable,with all remainingvariablesx, y, z, t tenned
independentvariables.
A linear differentialoperatoris an operatorcontainingpartial derivativessuchthat
L(v+w)=Lv+Lw and L()..v) = )"Lv
for all functionsv andw in the domainof L andall scalars)...

A PDE in someunknownfunction u is saidto be linearif the equationcanbe written
in the fonn
Lu=l,
whereL is a linear differential operatorand the function 1 doesnot dependon u or
any of its derivatives. If 1 = 0, the equationis said to be homogeneous,while if
1 f=. 0, the equationis saidto be nonhomogeneous.
6 INTRODUCTION
The order of a PDE refersto the orderof the highest-orderderivativethat appearsin

the equation. Finally, the dimension of a PDE refersto the numberof independent
variablespresent. If there is a clear distinction betweentime and spacevariables,
dimensionis also usedfor the spatialpart alone.
Example 1.1. Find the dimensionand order of the following PDEs. Which are
linear, and which arehomogeneous?
Heat equation: Ut = Du xx + I(x) (1.1)
Wave equation: Utt - c2 u xx = 0 (1.2)
Laplace'sequation: U xx +u yy = 0 (1.3)
Advectionequation: 8u+8u=0 (1.4)

8x 8y
KdV equation: Ut + UU xx + U xxx = 1 (1.7)

Solution.
• Equation(1.1) is a two-dimensionalsecond-order linearnonhomogeneous (for
I =1= 0) PDE. It is sometimescalled the one-dimensionalheatequationsince
the spacevariablex is one-dimensional.It canbe written as Lu = I, with the
differential operator
8 82
L= at -D 8x2 ·
• Equation(1.2) is a two-dimensionalsecond-orderlinearhomogeneous PDE. It
is also sometimescalled the one-dimensionalwave equation,since,again,the
spacevariablex is one-dimensional.It canbe written as Lu = 0, with
L _82 2 82
- at2 - C 8x2 .
• Equation(1.3) is a two-dimensionalsecond-orderlinear homogeneousPDE,

with
82 82
L= 8x2 + 8y2.
• Equation(1.4) is a two-dimensionalfirst-orderlinearhomogeneous
PDE, with
8 8
L=8x+8y·
• Equation(1.5) is a three-dimensionalsecond-orderlinear homogeneous

PDE,
with
CLASSIFICATION OF SECOND-ORDER LINEAR PDEs 7
• Equation(1.6) is a two-dimensionalsecond-ordernonlinearnonhomogeneous
PDE.
• Equation (1.7) is a two-dimensionalthird-order nonlinearnonhomogeneous

PDE.
•
11.2 CLASSIFICATION OF SECOND-ORDER LINEAR PDEs
Definitions of the kingdoms of PDEs, elliptic, parabolic, and hyperbolic, can be

obtainedfrom a study of second-orderlinear PDEs. A generalsecond-orderlinear
constant-coefficienthomogeneous PDE canbe written as
auxx + 2buxy + CU yy + dux + euy + fu = 0, (1.8)
with realconstantcoefficientsa, b, c, d, e, f (placingthe factor2 in front of the b-term

is just a conventionto makethe PDE look nicerin the end). The type of this equation
is definedby its principal part, which consistsof the highest-orderterms,
auxx + 2buxy + CU yy.
!)u.
This expressioncan be written in abstractmatrix notationas
(:x ~) (: ~) (
Here, we just pretendthat a/axand a/ay
are symbols that can be enteredas
componentsof a vector. The interpretationis that this vector is applied as the
!) ~_(!(a ~)a) (:( :) ( ~ )

derivativeoperatorson the function u(x, y):
(! ~) U :) ( u
aux + buy )
- ax ay bux + cuy
= auxx + buyx + buxy + CU yy
= auxx + 2buxy + CU yy.
For the last equality,we usethe assumptionthat u(x, y) is twice continuouslydiffer-

entiablein orderthat the mixed partial derivativesare identical,that is, u xy = u yx.
8 INTRODUCTION
The matrix (~ ~) is saidto be the coefficientmatrix of the POE,or the symbol

of the POE.The classificationof POEsis basedon the relativesignof the eigenvalues
of the symbol. Notice that the symbol is symmetric; hence,the eigenvaluesare
real. As in linear algebra,the determinantof this matrix gives the productof the
eigenvalues:
>'1>'2 = detA = ac - b2 ,
which we useto definethe type of the equation.
Definition 1.1. (Type ofPDE)
The POE
auxx + 2buxy + CU yy + dux + euy + fu = 0
is saidto be
• elliptic if and only if ac - b2 > OJ that is, the eigenvaluesof A havethe same
sign and are not zero, that is, both are positiveor both are negative.
• parabolicif andonly if ac - b2 = OJ that is, at leastoneeigenvalueis zero.

• hyperbolicif and only if ac - b2 < OJ that is, the eigenvalueshaveopposite
signsandare nonzero.
Now that we have defined our POE kingdoms, we introduce their corresponding
rulers:
• Laplace'sequationin two dimensionsis given by U xx + U yy = 0, and its
symbolis A = (~ ~) with determinantdet A = 1 > O. Hence,Laplace's
equationis elliptic.
• The heat equationin one (spatial) dimensionis given by Ut = kuxx , and

its symbol is A = (~ ~) with determinantdet A = O. Hence,the heat
equationis parabolic.
• The wave equationin one (spatial) dimensionis given by Utt - c2uxx = 0,

and its symbol is A = (_~2 ~) with determinantdet A = -c2 < O.
Hence,the waveequationis hyperbolic.
Example1.2. Classify the following second-orderlinear POEs.
1. Ut+ 2utt + 3uxx = 0

2. 17uyy + 3ux + u = 0
3. 4uxy + 2uxx + U yy = 0
4. U yy - U xx - 2uxy = 0
CLASSIFICATION OF SECOND-ORDER LINEAR PDEs 9
Solution.
1. Symbol A = (~ ~) , det A = 6 > 0, elliptic
2. Symbol A = (~ 107 ) , det A = 0, parabolic
3. Symbol A = (; i), det A = -2 < 0, hyperbolic
4. Symbol A = ( -1 -1)
-1 1' det A = -2 < 0, hyperbolic
One would expectthat a classificationschemeshouldnot dependon the coordinate

•
systemin which the PDE is expressed.To seethat this is indeedthe case,considera
changeof independentvariable:
'f/ = 'f/(x, y).

The transformationis nonsingular if the Jacobiandeterminantof the transformation
is nonzero;that is,
J = I8(~, 'f/) I # O.
8(x,y)
Let us denotethe transformeddependentvariable as w(~, 'f/) = u(x, y). Then the
PDE (1.8) becomes
where
a = a~~ + 2b~x~y + ~;,

(3 = a~x'f/x + b(~x'f/y + ~y'f/x) + ~y'f/y,
'Y = a'f/~ + 2b'f/x'f/y + C'f/;,
o= d~x + e~y,
E = d'f/x + e'f/y.
Computingthe symbol A for the transformedequationand its determinantgives
The sign of a'Y - (32 is the sameas that of ac - b2 . Hence,the classificationof PDEs
is invariantundera changeof coordinates.
10 INTRODUCTION
1.3 SIDE CONDITIONS
Rememberfrom the methodsfor ODEs that when solving linear ODEs, one usually
finds a "general" solution that involves a numberof undeterminedconstantsand
that to find theseconstants,some side conditions are needed. Quite often, initial
conditions are used to identify a unique solution. This idea is similar for PDEs:
Here the PDE alonedoesnot give rise to uniqueness,as canbe seenfrom Laplace's
equationin two dimensions.
Example1.3. Considerthe two-dimensionalLaplaceequation
Uxx+U yy =0.
This equationis a second-orderlinear homogeneous
PDE. Solutionsto this equation
include:
U(x, y) = cxy, U(x,y) = csinnxcoshny,
u(x, y) = c(x2 _ y2), u(x, y) = ce-Y cosx,
u(x, y) = c(x3 - 3xy2), u(x, y) = clog (x2 + y2),
u(x, y) = c(x4 _ 6x2y2 + y4), u(x,y) = ctan-1(y/x),
u(x, y) = c(x - lOx y2 + 5xy4), u(x,y) = cesinxcoshysin(cosx sinhy),
5 3
where,in eachcase,theconstantc is arbitrary. Thelist goeson. Polynomialsolutions

of any orderexist, asdo solutionsinvolving variouscombinationsof exponentialand
trigonometricfunctions, as well as many others. Linear combinationsof solutions
are againsolutions. •
We havejust seenthat PDEs alone often have infinitely many solutions. To get a
uniquesolutionto a particularproblem,additionalconditionsmustbe applied. These
auxiliary conditionsare most often of two types: initial conditionsand boundary
conditions. Initial conditions are typically given at a chosenstart time, usually
t = O. Boundaryconditionsareusedto describewhatthe systemdoeson the domain
boundaries.
As an example,we introduceclassicalboundaryconditionsfor the heatequation:
Let n c ]Rn be a given domain whoseboundaryis smooth(here, smoothmeans
that at eachpoint thereexistsa uniquenormal vectorto the boundary an).
The heat
equationon n reads
Ut = kll.u.
1. Initial conditions: We prescribethe initial temperaturedistribution in n at

somespecific time (usually, t = 0). In threedimensions,thesetake the form
u(x, y, z, 0) = uo(x,y, z).
an
2. Boundaryconditions: We give conditionson the boundary for all times.
The boundaryconditionswe considerin this book are divided into threecate-
gories:
SIDE CONDITIONS 11
(a) Dirichlet conditions: We prescribeu on an. Thesetake the fonn
u(x, y, z, t) = g(x, y, z, t) ,
for (x, y, z) E an. Common examplesare homogeneousDirichlet

boundaryconditions:
u(x,y,z,t)= 0
on an.
(b) Neumannconditions: We prescribethe heatflow throughthe boundary
an. Thesetakethe fonn
au
an =g
for (x, y, z) E an, where au/an = Vu· n is a directional derivative
(n being the outward-pointingunit nonnalto an). Commonexamples
occur when there is no heat flow through the boundary(representing
perfect insulation) and are called homogeneousNeumannboundary
conditions:
au =0
an
on an.
(c) Robin conditions: We prescribea mixture of Dirichlet and Neumann
boundaryconditions.Thesetake the fonn
au
au + {3 an = 9
for (x, y, z) E an and t ~ o.

This type of boundarycondition occurs
when,for example,Newton'slaw of cooling is applied. Newton'slaw of
cooling statesthat the rate at which heatis transferredacrossa boundary
is proportional to the temperaturedifference acrossthe boundary. If
we denotethe temperatureoutsidethe region 0. by T, Newton'slaw of
cooling canbe written as
au
/w + v - = KT.
an
A completeproblemfor a PDE consistsof the PDE plus an appropriatenumberof
side conditions. For example,a completeproblem for a generalheat equationis
given by
au
at = v . (K(x)Vu) + Q(x), (x,y,z) En, t ~ 0, (1.9)
u(x, y, z, 0) = f(x, y, z), (x,y,z) E 0., (1.10)

au
au(x, y, z, t) + {3 an (x, y, z, t) = g(x, y, z, t), (x, y, z) E an, t ~ O. (1.11)
12 INTRODUCTION
We seethat equation(1.11) correspondsto

(i) Dirichlet conditions,if a i- 0, (3 = 0;
(ii) Neumannconditions,if a = 0, (3 i- 0;
(iii) Robin conditions,if a i- 0, (3 i- 0.
If a PDE is studiedon an infinite domain,appropriatedecayconditionsare typically
used. For example,we might requirethat
with appropriateconstantsCl, C2.
1.3.1 Boundary Conditions on an Interval

Most of this book dealswith PDEson n-dimensionalintervals:
Hence,the following rule of thumb can be applied:

Rule of Thumbfor Side Conditions:
To formulate a completeproblemfor a PDE on an interval, the numberof side
conditions for each of the variables t, x, y, ... correspondsto the maximum
order of the derivativewith respectto that variable.
For example,the heatequationUt = k(uxx + Uyy) on J = [0,1] x [0,1] needsone
initial condition (orderof time derivative is 1), two boundaryconditionsfor x, and
two boundaryconditionsfor y. Thesecould be of Dirichlet form: for example,
U(O, y, t) = h (y, t), u(l, y, t) = h(y, t),

u(x, 0, t) = h(x, t), u(x, 1, t) = f4(X, t),
u(x, y, 0) = g(x, y).
°
The one-dimensionalwave equationUtt - c2 uxx = on [0, 1] needstwo initial
conditions,usually for location u(x, 0) = f(x) and initial velocity Ut(x, 0) = g(x),
and two boundaryconditions,typically for u(O, t) and u(l, t). The rule of thumb
aboveis a nice tool to checkif the correctnumberof side conditionsis given. The
rule can be extendedto more generaldomains(e.g., circular domains),but one has
to be careful to gain the right intuition. We give severaladditionalexampleslater.
1.4 LINEAR PDEs
In this sectionwe explorelinear PDEs a bit more and presenta very importanttool
called the superpositionprinciple. This principle is the very foundation of our
solution theory.
LINEAR POEs 13
Recall that every linear PDE canbe written in oneof two forms:
Lu=O (homogeneous)
or
Lu=/ (nonhomogeneous)
for some linear differential operator L. What exactly do we mean by a linear

differential operator?The definition is analogousto that in linear algebra.
Definition 1.2. (Linear Operator)

An operatorL with domainof definition D (L) is said to be linear if it satisfiesthe
following two properties:
(i) L( UI + U2) = LUI + LU2, for two functionsUI, U2 E D(L); and

(ii) L(cu) = cLu, for any constantc E lR andU E D(L).
For differential operators,we usually take the domainas the setof functionsthat are
continuouslydifferentiableon the underlyingset O.
Example1.4. If
o 0
L= ox + oy'
the equationLu = 0 is equivalentto
Ux +u Y = O.
The domainof L is
D(L) = {set of continuouslydifferentiablefunctions},
andit is easily seenthat the advectionequationis linear.
Example1.5. If
•
02 0
L =- +eYsinx- -1,
ox2 oy
the equationLu = 0 is equivalentto
uxx + eY sinxuy = u.
The domainof L is
D(L) = {set oftwice continuouslydifferentiablefunctions},
and again,checkingthat L is linear is straightforward.

•
14 INTRODUCTION
1.4.1 Principle of Superposition
The principle of superpositionmakesit much easierto deal with linear PDEs than
nonlinearPDEs.
Theorem 1.3. (Principle ofSuperposition)

If Ul andU2 are solutionsto a linear homogeneous PDE Lu = 0, then Cl Ul + C2U2
is also a solutionfor arbitrary constantsCl and C2.
Proof. We haveLUl = 0 and LU2 = 0, sinceUl andU2 are solutions. Therefore,
Example 1.6. ConsiderLaplace'sequationin two dimensions,Lu = 0, where
Let
Un(X,y) = cosnxsinh ny
for n = 1,2,3,.... For eachn, Un is a solutionto Laplace'sequation,since
82 82
LUn = 8x2 (cosnx sinhny) + 8y2 (cosnx sinh ny)
+
= _n2 cosnxsinhny n 2 cosnxsinhny= O.
Hence,by the principle of superposition,
N N
u(x,y) = Lanun(x,y)= Lancosnxsinhny
n=l n=l
is also a solutionfor any integerN and anyconstantsan.
Thus, the principle of superpositiongives us a meansof constructingnew solutions

•
if a few solutions are alreadyknown. In general,this doesnot hold for nonlinear
equations,as the following exampleillustrates.
Example 1.7. (Burger's Equation)

Considerthe following two-dimensionalfirst-order nonlinearPDE:
Ux +uuy = O.
The functions
y
and U2(X,y) = - -
l+x
LINEAR POES 15
are solutionsto the POE, since
aUl + Ul aUl = 0 + (1)(0) = 0

ax ay
and
aU2 + U2 aU2 = _ y + -y- . _1_ = O.

ax ay (1 + X)2 1+x 1+x
However,the sumof thesetwo solutions,

y
u(x, y) = Ul(X, y) + U2(X, y) = 1 + -1-'
+x
is not a solution, since
•
In general,the principle of superpositionholds only for linear homogeneous
POEs.
For nonhomogeneous POEs,we havethe following result:
Theorem1.4. If
(a) up is a solutionto the nonhomogeneous

POE Lu = f (i.e., Lup = f); and
(b) Uh is a solutionto the homogeneous

POE Lu = 0 (i.e., LUh = 0);
thenU = CUh + up is a solution to Lu = f for any constantc.
Proof. Lu = L(CUh + up) = CLUh + Lup = c(O) +f = f. o

This result meansthat if a particular solution to a linear nonhomogeneous
POE is
known and a solution to the homogeneouscounterpartis also known, then a new
solution to the nonhomogeneous POEmay be constructed.In fact, any solutionto a
linear nonhomogeneous u
POE will be of this form. Supposethat is any solution to
the nonhomogeneous POE Lu = f (i.e., Lu = f). Define Uh = U - up. Then
LUh = L(u - up) = Lu - Lup = f - f = OJ
thus, Uh is a solution to the homogeneousPOE Lu = O. Hence,any solution of u

the nonhomogeneous POE Lu = f can be written as the sum of a solution to the
homogeneous POE and any particularsolutionto the nonhomogeneous POE:
16 INTRODUCTION
1.5 STEADY-STATE AND EQUILIBRIUM SOLUTIONS
Definition 1.5. A steady-stateor equilibrium solution to a boundaryvalue-initial

valueproblemfor a PDE is a solution that doesnot dependon time; that is,
u(x, t) = u(x).
Example 1.8. (Diffusion Through a Cell Membrane)
Supposethat we want to computethe concentrationu(x, t) of a nutrient, for exam-
ple, oxygen, through a cell membraneof thickness£. We assumethat the oxygen
concentrationinside and outside the cell are constantwith values Cl (inside) and
C2 (outside). The correspondingboundaryvalue-initial value problememploysthe
diffusion equation:
Ut = Duxx ,
u(O, t) = Cl,
u(£, t) = C2,
u(x, 0) = f(x).
This is a nonhomogeneous Dirichlet problemfor the diffusion equation,where D

denotesthe diffusion coefficient of oxygenin the cell membraneand f(x) denotes
the initial distributionof oxygen. Later we learnhow to solvethis modelcompletely.
Here, we are only interestedin a steady-statedistribution. Since a steady-state
solutiondoesnot dependon time,
Ut(x, t) = 0,
so that
u(x, t) = u(x).
Thus,u dependsonly on the spatialvariablex, and
d2 u
dx2 = U xx = O.
Integratingtwice, we get
u'(x) =A and u(x) = Ax + B,

where A and B are two unknown constants,which can be determinedfrom the
boundaryconditions. At x = 0, we have
u(O) = Cl = Bj
hence,B = Cl. At x = £, we have
u( £) = C2 = A£ + Cl j
STEADY STATE AND EQUILIBRIUM SOLUTIONS 17
hence,A = (C2 - Cl)/£, andwe find the steady-statesolution
To make sure that we have found the right solution, we have to check that it is a
solutionto the original problem. It is a linearfunction; therefore,u" = O. At x = 0,
we haveu(O) = Cl, andat x = £, we find u(£) = C2.
The concentrationprofile througha membraneis a linear function that interpolates

betweenthe two concentrationlevels Cl and C2. •
Example 1.9. Next, we want to find the steady-statesolution to a homogeneous

Neumannproblemfor the heatequationon [0, £]:
Ut(x, t) = kuxx(x, t),

ux(O, t) = 0,
u x (£, t) = 0,
u(x,O) = f(x).
As before, we find that at steadystate we have u(x, t) = u(x) and u"(x) = O.

Hence,u( x) is a linearfunction u( x) = Ax + B with two unknownconstantsA and
B. Using the boundaryconditions,we find that
u'(O)=A=O and u'(£) = A = 0,
and both boundaryconditionsrequire that A = 0; hence,u(x) = B is a constant

function.
Sincewe havealreadyusedboth boundaryconditions,how can we find the missing

constantB? To answerthis question,we needa deeperunderstandingof the con-
servationof massproperty of the diffusion equationor the conservationof energy
propertyof theheatequationwith homogeneous Neumannboundaryconditions.The
integral
M(t) = 1£ u(x, t) dx
can be understoodas the total mass (in the caseof the diffusion equation)or as
the total heat energy (in the caseof the heat equation)in the system. Using the
18 INTRODUCTION
fundamentaltheoremof calculus,we find that
dd (
dt M(t) = dt 10 u(x, t) dx
= fol Ut(X, t) dx
= fo£ kuxx(x,t) dx
= k [ux(e, t) - ux(O,t)]
=0.
=
Hence, M(t) constant,and the total mass(heatenergy)is conserved. Thus, we
expectthat the steady-statesystemhasthe sametotal mass(heatenergy)asthe initial
system.The initial mass(heatenergy)is
Mo = M(O) = fol f(x) dx,

andwe requirethat
Mo = fo£ u(x) dx = fol Bdx = Be.

Hence,
B= Mo
e'
andthe steady-statesolution to the problemaboveis
M 1 [l
u(x) = --;- = "'i 10 f(x) dx.
In the next example,we add a sourceterm to the heatequation.

•
Example1.10. Find the steady-statesolutionto the following PDE on [0,271'] :
Ut = 3uxx + 9 sin x,
u(x,O) = 9sinx,
u(O, t) = 9,
ux (27l', t) = O.
Solution. The steady-statesolutionu(x) satisfies
3u" + 9sinx = O.
FIRST EXAMPLE FOR SEPARATION OF VARIABLES 19
Hence,U" = -3sinx, which hasthe generalsolution
u(x) = 3 sinx + ClX + C2.

The boundaryconditionat x
we needthe derivativeU' (x)
°
= givesu(o) = 9 = C2. For the boundaryat x = 211",
= 3 cosx + Cl. The correspondingboundarycondition
°
gives
u'(211") = = 3 + Cl;
hence,Cl = -3, and the steady-statesolution is

u(x) = 3sinx - 3x + 9.
•
1.6 FIRST EXAMPLE FOR SEPARATION OF VARIABLES
Separationof variables is a method that tries to separatethe dependenceof the

correspondingvariables. Supposethat we have a linear PDE for some unknown
function u(x, y). First, we look for a solution (separatedsolution) of the form
u(x, y) = X(x) . Y(y).

So far, we do not know if this idea works. Nevertheless,we substitutethis assumed
form of the solution into the PDE, perform somemanipulations,and, we hope,end
up with ODEs for the unknownfunctions X andY that we can solve.
Example 1.11. Considerthe one-dimensionalheatequationwith Dirichlet boundary

conditionson the interval [0, £l:
au = ka2u x E n = [0, £], t > 0, (1.12)

at ax 2 '
u(O, t) = 0, (1.13)
u(£, t) = 0, (1.14)
u(x, 0) = f(x) = 3 sin 2~X. (1.15)
Here, u(x, t) representsthe temperaturein a bar at time t and position x. Trying the
methodof separationof variables,we assumea solution of the form
u(x, t) = X(x) . T(t). (1.16)
Then
au
at (x, t) = X(x) . T'(t) and ~:~ (x, t) = X"(x) . T(t).
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she had not the strength to undress. She remained lying on her bed,
with staring eyes.
CHAPTER X
In the drawing-room, Thérèse was sitting in the dark. There were
still some embers alive under the ashes of the fire. She did not
move. Now that it was too late, stray passages from the confession
she had prepared during her journey, floated to the surface of her
mind; but she could not find fault with herself for not having used it.
As a matter of fact, the story was too well constructed, and had but
little reference to reality. The importance she had chosen to attach
to young Azévédo’s conversation was mere foolishness. As if that
could have had the slightest effect! No, she had obeyed some inner
inexorable law: she had failed to destroy this family, so she herself
would be destroyed; they were right to consider her a monster, but
she thought them monstrous, too. Without appearing to do so they
now intended gradually and methodically to crush her out of
existence. Henceforth, this powerful family machine would be used
against her,—because she had not understood how to dislocate the
mechanism, nor get out of reach of its ruthless wheels. It was
useless to look for any reason other than the fact that they were
what they were, and she was herself. “All those efforts,” she
thought, “to wear a mask and a disguise, and impersonate a wife,
which I could only keep up for less than two years, I imagine other
women, no different from me, carry on until they die, saved,
perhaps, by use and wont, drugged by habit, and stupefied into
slumber against the maternal and all-powerful bosom of the Family.
But I ... I ... I....”
She got up, opened the window, and felt the chill of dawn. Why
not escape? She had only to get out of the window. Would they
pursue her? Would they again deliver her up to justice? It was a risk
worth taking. Anything was better than the interminable agony.
Thérèse had already drawn up a chair against the window. But she
had no money; thousands of pines were hers, but they were
useless: she could not touch a penny except through Bernard. She
could do nothing but take to the moors, as Daguerre had done, that
hunted murderer for whom Thérèse as a child had felt so much pity.
(She remembered the gendarmes whom Balionte had entertained in
the kitchen at Argelouse)—and it was the Desqueyroux dog who had
got on the poor wretch’s track. He had been picked up half-dead
with hunger in the heather; and Thérèse had seen him lying bound
in a haycart. He was said to have died on the ship before he reached
Cayenne. A ship ... a convict settlement.... They were quite capable
of giving her up, as they had said. That evidence that Bernard
pretended he had,—it was a lie, no doubt; unless he had discovered
that package of poisons in the pocket of the old cloak.
Thérèse decided to make certain. She felt her way to the
staircase: as she went up it she saw more clearly, the light of dawn
was shining through the windows above her. There, on the attic
landing, was the cupboard where the old clothes were hanging,—the
ones that never appeared, because they were only used during the
shooting season. There was a deep pocket in that faded mantle:
Aunt Clara used to put her knitting in it in the times when she also
used to go out and watch for the pigeons to come over. Thérèse
slipped her hand into it and drew out the packet sealed with wax:
Chloroform: 10 grammes.
Aconitine: 2 grammes.
Digitaline: 20 centigrammes.
She read the words and figures over again. Death: she had
always had a terror of death. The essential thing was not to
contemplate death,—only to think of the necessary preliminaries:
pour out the water, dissolve the powder, drink it off, lie down on a
bed, and close her eyes: she must not look further than that. Why
be more afraid of the sleep that was death, than of any other sleep?
If she was shivering, it was only because the early morning air was
chilly. She went downstairs again, and stopped at the door of the
room in which Marie slept. The nurse’s snores were like the grunts of
an animal. Thérèse pushed the door back: the growing daylight
filtered through the shutters, and the narrow iron bed gleamed white
in the darkness. Two tiny fists were lying on the sheet: a baby profile
was buried in the pillow. Thérèse recognised that ear; it was a little
too large,—just like her own. They were right, a replica of herself lay
there, sunk in slumber. “I shall go away,—but that part of me
remains; a fate that must be fulfilled to the end, and not one iota
omitted.” All manner of dumb desires and blind inclinations, laws of
the blood that none may escape,—in these she must survive.
Thérèse had read of desperate people carrying off their children to
death with them: worthy citizens let their paper fall, exclaiming
“How can such things be possible?” Because she was a criminal,
Thérèse knew too well that they were possible, and that for very
little.... She knelt down, and laid her lips against a little outstretched
hand; she was amazed at something that surged up from her inmost
being, rose up to her eyes, and burned her cheeks: a few poor
tears,—she who never wept!
Thérèse got up, looked at the child once more, then went into her
own room, filled a glass with water, broke the wax seal, and
hesitated between the three packets of poison.
The window was open. The crowing of the cocks seemed to
cleave the mist, which still clung to the pines in transparent strips.
The land lay bathed in the dawn. How could she say farewell to so
much light? What was death? No one knew what it was. Thérèse
was not quite certain that it meant annihilation: she was not sure
that there was no one there. She loathed herself for feeling such
terrors; she who did not hesitate to hurl a fellow-creature into
nothingness, was scared of it herself. How her cowardice humiliated
her! If that Being existed (and in one brief instant she saw before
her that dreadful Corpus Christi procession, that solitary figure
weighed down under his golden cape, the thing that he carried in
both hands, and his look of dejection); since He exists, let Him turn
aside the murderous hand before it is too late; and if it is His will
that a poor blind soul should pass that bourne, let Him give a loving
welcome to the criminal whom He created.
Thérèse poured the chloroform into the water: its name was more
familiar to her and made her feel less frightened because it called up
images of sleep. She must be quick: the house was awakening:
Balionte had taken down the shutters in Aunt Clara’s room. What
was she shouting to the deaf woman? The servant usually knew how
to make herself understood by a movement of the lips. A noise of
doors and hurried steps; Thérèse had only just the time to throw a
shawl over the table to hide the poisons. Balionte came in without
knocking.
“Ma’m’iselle is dead! I found her dead, on her bed with all her
clothes on. She is cold already.”
In spite of everything, a rosary was placed between the fingers of

the old unbeliever, a crucifix on her breast. Tenants came in, knelt
down, and went out, not without long looks at Thérèse who was
standing at the head of the bed: (“And who knows if it wasn’t she
who did it?”) Bernard had gone to Saint Clair to tell the Family and
to make the necessary arrangements. He must have thought that
this accident came at an opportune moment and would distract
people’s attention. Thérèse looked at the body, the old faithful body
that came and lay down in her path at the very moment she was
going to hurl herself to death. Chance: coincidence? If any one
talked about free-will, she used to shrug her shoulders. People said
to each other: “Did you see? She didn’t even pretend to cry.”
Thérèse was speaking silently to her who was no longer there: she
must live, but like a corpse in the hands of those who hate her. She
must try and look no further.
At the funeral Thérèse took her proper place. On the following
Sunday, she entered the church with Bernard who instead of going
down the aisle, as his custom was, ostentatiously walked up the
nave. Thérèse did not raise her crêpe veil until she had reached her
place between her mother-in-law and her husband. She was hidden
from the congregation by a pillar: opposite her was only the choir.
She was hemmed in on every side: the mass of the congregation
behind her, Bernard on the right, Madame de la Trave on the left,
only the choir lay before her, as the arena stretches away in front of
the bull when he emerges from the darkness: that empty space
where between two children stood a man, disguised and muttering,
with parted hands.
CHAPTER XI
In the evening Bernard and Thérèse came back to Argelouse to
the Desqueyroux house, which had hardly been inhabited for years.
The chimneys smoked, the windows did not fasten properly, and the
draughts blew under the doors where the rats had gnawed them.
But the autumn was so lovely that year, that Thérèse did not at first
suffer from these inconveniences. Bernard was out shooting until the
evening: no sooner had he come back, than he settled down in the
kitchen and took his dinner with the Balions: Thérèse could hear the
clatter of forks and the monotonous sound of voices. Night falls
quickly in October. She had read the few books she had brought with
her over and over again, and she was tired of them. Bernard did not
reply to her request that he would send on an order to his bookseller
at Bordeaux: he only allowed Thérèse to renew her supply of
cigarettes. She sat and stirred the fire ... but the thick resinous
smoke made her eyes smart and irritated her throat, which had
already been injured by tobacco. No sooner had Balionte fetched
away the remains of a hurried meal, than Thérèse put out the lamp
and went to bed. How many hours she lay there before sleep came
to her deliverance! The silence of Argelouse prevented her sleeping:
she preferred the windy nights,—the confused murmur of the pines
is full of human kindness. It soothed the turmoil of her mind. The
wild nights of the equinox sent her to sleep better than the nights
when all was still.
However interminable the evenings seemed, she sometimes came
back to the house before dusk had fallen,—either because, at the
sight of her, a mother had seized her child by the hand and dragged
it roughly back into the farmyard,—or because some herdsman,
whose name she knew, had not answered her greeting. Oh, how
good it would be to lose herself, to drown herself in the deepest
depths of some populous city! At Argelouse, there was not a
shepherd that did not know her story (even Aunt Clara’s death was
laid to her charge). There was not a threshold that she would have
dared to cross: she went out by a back door, and avoided houses;
the distant rumble of a cart was enough to make her hurry down a
side road. She walked quickly, with the beating heart of a driven
bird; and she lay down in the heather to wait until a bicycle had
passed.
On Sunday, at Mass at Saint Clair, she did not feel this terror, and
was conscious of a respite. Public opinion in the town seemed more
favourable. She did not know that her father and the La Traves had
depicted her as an innocent victim wounded to death. “We are afraid
that the poor girl will never get over it: she refuses to see any one
and the doctor says that she must not be opposed. Bernard is
constantly with her, but her mind is affected....”
On the last night of October a violent wind from the Atlantic raved
among the pines for many hours, and Thérèse lay between sleeping
and waking listening to its ocean roar. But at daylight she was
awakened by quite another sound of lamentation. She pushed open
the shutters and the room was still dark: a dense steady rain
streamed down on to the roofs of the out-buildings and the leaves of
the oak trees, which had hardly yet begun to fall. Bernard did not go
out that day. Thérèse sat smoking; she threw away her cigarette,
went out onto the landing, and heard her husband wandering from
one room to another on the ground floor: a smell of pipe-smoke
reached her room, overpowered that of Thérèse’s light tobacco, and
she recognised the smell of her old life. The first day of bad
weather.... How many would she have to live through, sitting at the
corner of that fire-place by the dying embers? In the corners of the
room the paper was peeling off the damp walls, on which could still
be seen the marks of the old pictures which Bernard had taken away
to adorn the drawing-room at Saint Clair,—and the desolate rusty
nails. On the mantelpiece, in frames with a triple border of
tortoiseshell, stood photographs as pallid as if the dead they
represented had died a second death. Bernard’s father, her
grandmother, Bernard himself as a boy, with bobbed hair. There was
still the whole day before her which she must spend in that
melancholy room; and weeks, and months to follow.
As it began to grow dark, Thérèse could bear it no longer; she
opened the door quietly, went downstairs and into the kitchen.
There she saw Bernard sitting on a low chair before the fire. He got
up suddenly; Balion stopped cleaning a gun; Balionte dropped her
knitting. All three of them looked at her with such an expression that
she asked:
“Are you afraid of me?”
“Didn’t you know you were forbidden to enter the kitchen?” She
did not reply and turned towards the door. Bernard called her back.
“However, as you have come, I should like to tell you that my
presence here is no longer necessary. We have been able to work up
a good deal of sympathy at Saint Clair; people think you, or pretend
to think you, rather neurasthenic. It is understood that you prefer to
live alone and that I often come to see you. After this you need not
come to Mass.”
She stammered out that she did not mind coming; to which he
replied that her likes and dislikes were not in question. The desired
result had been obtained:
“And since the Mass means nothing to you....”
She opened her mouth, seemed about to speak, but said nothing.
He would not give way, lest a word or a gesture of hers might
compromise a success so quick and so unexpected. She asked how
Marie was. He said she was very well, and that she was leaving to-
morrow for Beaulieu with Anne and Madame de la Trave. He was
going to spend a few weeks there himself; two months at the most.
He opened the door and stood aside for Thérèse to pass.
In the dark dawn she heard Balion harnessing the horses; then
Bernard’s voice, the trampling of hooves, and the rattle of the
departing carriage. And then the rain,—on the roofs, on the clouded
window-panes, on the desolate fields, on fifty miles of moor and
marsh, on the shifting sanddunes by the sea shore, and on the sea.
Thérèse lit a cigarette from the one she had just finished. About
four o’clock she put on a mackintosh and went out into the rain. But
the darkness frightened her and she came back to her room. The
fire was out, and as she was shivering, she went to bed. About
seven o’clock Balionte brought her up an egg, fried, on a slice of
ham, but she would not eat it; the taste of fat had begun to make
her feel sick! Never anything but potted meat or ham. Balionte said
that she had nothing better to give her: Monsieur Bernard had
forbidden her to have game. She complained that Thérèse made her
go up and down stairs for nothing (she had something the matter
with her heart and her legs were swollen). The work was really too
much for her; she only did it for Monsieur Bernard’s sake.
Thérèse was feverish that night, and in her abnormally clear
imagination she evolved a complete existence in Paris: she saw once
more the restaurant in the Bois where she had been; this time she
was not with Bernard, but with Jean Azévédo and some young
women. She put down her tortoiseshell cigarette case on the table,
and talked frankly and freely, to the faint accompaniment of an
orchestra. She could see the circle of admiring faces, listening
eagerly but without astonishment. One woman said: “That is so like
me.... I have felt that, too.” A literary man took her aside, and said:
“You ought to write down everything that comes into your head; we
will publish it in our review and call it ‘The Diary of a Woman of To-
day.’”
A young man who was desperately in love with her, took her
home in his car. They were driving back along the Avenue du Bois;
she felt no emotion whatever, but she took a certain pleasure in the
agonised young body close beside her. “No, not this evening,” she
said to him. “I’m dining with a friend this evening.” “What about to-
morrow evening?” “I can’t to-morrow either.” “Are your evenings
never free?” “Hardly ever ... I might almost say never.”
There was one being in her life who made the rest of the world
seem insignificant; some one unknown to any one in her circle; very
humble and obscure; but Thérèse’s whole existence revolved round
this sun whom she alone could see, and whose warmth reached no
other flesh but hers. The murmur of Paris was like the wind in the
pines. This body that lay so close to hers, light as it was, prevented
her breathing; but she would sooner stifle than send him away. (And
Thérèse made the gesture of an embrace—she clasped her left
shoulder with her right hand and drove the nails of her left hand into
her right shoulder.)
She got up, crossed the room barefooted, and opened the
window; the night outside was not cold; but she could hardly bring
herself to imagine that a day must come when it would rain no
more. If she had had any money she would have escaped to Paris,
gone straight to Jean Azévédo and confided in him; he would know
how to get her work. If she could only be a woman alone in Paris,
earning her living and dependent on no one...! Oh to be without a
family! She would choose her own people as she pleased,—the tie
should not be one of blood, but of the mind, and even of the flesh
as well; she would discover her true relations, however few and
scattered they might be.... She went to sleep at last, with the
window open. The cold damp dawn awoke her; her teeth chattered,
and she could not bring herself to get up and shut the window,—she
could not even put out her arms and draw up the bedclothes.
That day she did not get up or even do her hair. She swallowed a
few mouthfuls of potted meat and drank some coffee so as to be
able to smoke,—tobacco on an empty stomach did not agree with
her. She tried to recapture her imaginings of the night; and, indeed,
at Argelouse the day was almost as quiet and as dark as the night.
In these days, the shortest in the year, time disappears under the
pall of rain, and one hour melts into the next; dusk passes into dusk
in unalterable silence. But Thérèse had no desire for sleep, and her
dreams became more and more vivid; she searched her past
methodically for forgotten faces, lips that she had loved from afar,
vague forms that casual encounters, or the chances of the night,
had brought into contact with her young body. She moulded an
image of happiness, invented an imaginary joy, and used all the
fragments of her experience to build up an impossible love.
“She never gets up now, and she leaves her potted meat and her
bread,” said Balionte to Balion some time after this: “but she finishes
the bottle fast enough. She’d drink as much as you’d let her have,
she would. And then she burns the sheets with her cigarettes. She’ll
end by setting the house on fire. She smokes so much that her
fingers and nails are all yellow, just as if she’d dipped them in arnica.
It’s a shame, so it is!—those sheets were woven at home.... She
won’t get clean ones very often, I can tell you.”
She added that she was perfectly willing to sweep the room or to
make the bed: it was the creature’s fault for pretending to be ill and
not getting up. It was not worth Balionte’s trouble, with her swollen
legs and all, to carry up jugs of hot water; she found them in the
evening standing at the bedroom door where she had put them in
the morning.
Thérèse’s thoughts began to be less absorbed in the unknown
being that she had evoked for her delight; she grew weary of her
happiness, and sated with imaginary pleasure, so she conceived
another way of escape.
All manner of people knelt about her humble bed; a child of
Argelouse, one of those who ran away when she came near, was
brought dying into Thérèse’s room; she laid her nicotine-stained
fingers on him, and he got up cured.
She had other and less exalted dreams. She planned a house by
the seaside, saw in her mind’s eye the garden, and the terrace,
arranged the rooms, chose each piece of furniture one by one, tried
to make up her mind where she would put what she had brought
from Saint Clair, and argued with herself over the choice of
materials. Then the scene would fade, the outlines grew confused,
and nothing was left but an arbour and a bench beside the sea. And
there Thérèse was sitting, her head against the shoulder of one who
sat beside her; she got up, as the bell rang for dinner, and went into
the darkened arbour with some one walking at her side who
suddenly flung his arms about her and drew her to him. A kiss, she
thought, must bring time to a standstill; she imagined that in love
there must be seconds that last for ever. So she imagined; but she
would never know. Once more she sees the white house and the
well; she hears the harsh voice of the pump; the courtyard is full of
the fragrance of heliotrope; dinner will be a rest before the joys of
the evening and the night, which she dares not conceive, for they
pass so far beyond the powers of the human heart. Thus, the love of
which Thérèse, of all women, had been utterly frustrated, possessed
and pervaded all her being. She could hardly hear Balionte’s hoarse
cries. The old creature was trying to convey to her that Monsieur
Bernard would come back from the South one day or another
without letting them know. And what would he say when he saw
that room? It was little better than a pig-sty! Madame must get up
whether she liked it or not.
As she sat on the bed, Thérèse stared with amazement at her
skeleton-like legs, and her feet looked enormous. Balionte wrapped
her in a dressing-gown and pushed her into an arm-chair. She
reached out for the cigarettes, but her hand dropped nerveless at
her side. A cold sunlight came through the open window. Balionte
bustled about with a broom in her hand, breathing heavily and
grumbling to herself,—Balionte who must have had a good heart,
because it was always said that every Christmas the death of the pig
which she had been fattening made her cry. She could not bear
Thérèse not to answer her: in her eyes silence was an insult, a mark
of contempt. But Thérèse was no longer mistress of her speech.
When she felt against her body the coolness of the clean sheets, she
thought she had said, “Thank you,” though as a matter of fact she
had not uttered a word. “You won’t burn these, I think,” said
Balionte to her sharply as she left the room. Thérèse was afraid that
she had taken away the cigarettes and put out her hand towards the
table: they were gone. How could she live without smoking? She
could not exist without the constant touch of these small, dry, warm
objects against her fingers. She must have their odour always in her
nostrils, and fill the room with the fragrant mist that she had inhaled
and ejected from her lips. Balionte would not come back until the
evening; a whole afternoon without tobacco! She closed her eyes
and her yellow fingers moved mechanically as though they held a
cigarette.
At seven o’clock Balionte came in with a candle, and put the tray
on the table: milk, coffee, and a piece of bread. “So you don’t want
anything else?” And she waited maliciously for Thérèse to ask for her
cigarettes; but Thérèse’s face was turned steadfastly to the wall and
she did not move.
Doubtless Balionte had neglected to shut the window properly: a
gust of wind blew it open, and the cold night air filled the room.
Thérèse could not rouse herself to throw off the bedclothes, get up,
and run barefooted to the window. She lay, motionless, huddled up,
the sheets drawn up to her eyes, and the icy breath only touched
her forehead and her eyelids. Argelouse was full of the vast murmur
of the pines, their noise was like the noise of the ocean, but it did
not seem to break the silence of that place. Thérèse reflected that if
she meant to make a friend of pain, she should not have buried
herself beneath the bedclothes. She tried to push them back a little,
but could not bear the cold for more than a few seconds. She tried
again, and endured a little longer,—and so on, as if it had been a
game. Thus, though it was not deliberate, physical pain became her
occupation and—who knows?—her reason for existing in the world.
CHAPTER XII
“A letter from the master.”
As Thérèse did not take the envelope that she held out, Balionte
pressed it on her: Monsieur had surely said when he was coming
back, and she must know, so as to have everything in readiness.
“If Madame would like me to read it.”
“Oh, read it, read it,” said Thérèse. And, as she always did when
Balionte was in the room, turned her face to the wall. However, what
Balionte managed to decipher, aroused her from her lethargy.
“I have been glad to hear from Balion’s reports that all is
well at Argelouse....”
Bernard announced that he was coming back by road, but that as
he expected to stop at several places on the way he could not fix the
exact date of his return.
“It will certainly not be later than December 20th. Do not
be surprised to see me return with Anne and young
Deguilhem. They became engaged at Beaulieu, but it is not
yet official; young Deguilhem is anxious to see you first. A
mere question of formality, so he assures me; for my part, I
have a feeling that he wants to form an opinion on you know
what. I am sure you are intelligent enough to pass the test.
Remember that you are ill, and that your mind is affected.
Anyhow, I rely on you. Try not to damage Anne’s happiness,
or compromise the happy issue of a project so satisfactory for
the Family in every respect; you will not lose by it: if you fail
me I should not hesitate to make you pay dearly for any
attempt to wreck the scheme; but I am sure I have nothing
to fear on that score.”
It was a beautiful day, clear and cold. Thérèse got up, obedient to
Balionte’s injunctions, and took a turn in the garden leaning on her
arm, but she found it very difficult to finish a scrap of chicken for her
dinner. There were ten days left before December 20th. If Madame
would consent to make an effort, it was quite long enough to get on
her legs again.
“One can’t say that she doesn’t try,” said Balionte to Balion. “She
does what she can. Monsieur Bernard knows how to break in a dog
that won’t obey him. You know that iron collar he puts on them?
Well, it didn’t take him long to make her crawl. But he’d better not
be too sure of her....”
Thérèse was, in fact, making a great effort to try to give up
dreaming and sleeping, and come back to life again. She forced
herself to walk and eat, but especially to get her brain clear once
more, and to look at men and things with the eyes of the flesh;—
and just as though she were coming back to a stretch of heath
which she had set on fire, treading upon the ashes and walking
among the burnt and blackened pines, so she would try to speak
and smile among that Family,—her family.
On the eighteenth, about three o’clock, on a cloudy but fine
afternoon, Thérèse was sitting in her room in front of the fire, her
head leaning against the back of the chair, and her eyes shut. She
was awakened by the throbbing engines of a motor-car; she
recognised Bernard’s voice in the entrance-hall and also Madame de
la Trave’s. When Balionte, completely out of breath, had pushed
open the door without knocking, Thérèse was already standing up
before the mirror. She was putting rouge on her cheeks and lips. “I
must not frighten the poor young man,” she said to herself.
But Bernard had made a mistake in not going up to see his wife
at once. Young Deguilhem, who had promised his family “to keep his
eyes extremely wide open,” reflected that this was, “to say the least
of it, a rather significant piece of neglect.” He drew a little aside from
Anne and turned up his fur collar, remarking that “it was not worth
trying to warm these country drawing-rooms.” “Have you no cellar
below?” he asked Bernard. “If not, your floor will always rot unless
you lay down a bed of cement....”
Anne de la Trave was wearing a grey squirrel cloak, and a felt hat
without any ribbon or bow. (“But,” as Madame de la Trave said, “it
cost more just as it was, than our hats did with all their feathers and
aigrettes. It is the best felt, certainly: it comes from Lailhaca, but it
is a Reboux model.”) Madame de la Trave stretched out her boots to
the fire, and her face, at once arrogant and weak, was turned
towards the door. She had promised Bernard she would be equal to
the situation, but she had warned him that she would not kiss
Thérèse. “You cannot ask your mother to do that, it will be dreadful
enough for me to have to touch her hand. My feeling is this: what
she did was awful enough, God knows; but it isn’t that that revolts
me the most. One already knew that there were people capable of
committing murder ... but it’s her hypocrisy! That really is awful!
Don’t you remember what she said: ‘Mother, do take this chair, you
will be more comfortable....’ And don’t you remember when she was
so frightened of giving you a shock? ‘The poor darling has such a
horror of death, a consultation would be the end of him....’ God
knows I didn’t suspect anything; but ‘poor darling,’ coming from her,
did surprise me....”
At present, in that Argelouse drawing-room, Madame de la Trave
was only conscious of the embarrassment that every one was
feeling; and she noticed young Deguilhem’s goggle eyes fixed on
Bernard.
“Bernard, you ought to go and see what Thérèse is doing ...
perhaps she is feeling worse.”
Anne, who seemed indifferent and aloof from anything that might
happen, was the first to recognise a familiar step, and said: “I hear
her coming down.” Bernard, with a hand against his heart, was
seized with a palpitation; he was a fool not to have come the day
before; he ought to have arranged the scene with Thérèse in
advance. What would she say? She was quite capable of upsetting
everything without precisely doing anything that she could be called
to account for. How slowly she came downstairs! They were all
standing up, turned towards the door, which Thérèse at last opened.
Bernard was to remember, for many years after, that at the
approach of that wasted form, that small, white, painted face, his
first thought was: The Assize Court. But not because of Thérèse’s
crime. In a flash, he saw before him that coloured picture from the
Petit Parisien, which among so many others adorned the wooden
closets in the garden at Argelouse; while amid the buzz of flies, and
the shrill voices of the grasshoppers on a blazing day of summer, his
boyish eyes stared so earnestly at that red and green drawing which
depicted a poor wretched girl who had been imprisoned and starved
by her parents at Poitiers.
So now, he watched Thérèse as she stood there, bloodless and
emaciated, and realised his folly in not having got rid of this terrible
woman,—as one flings into the water an infernal machine which may
burst at any moment. Whether consciously or not, Thérèse
suggested tragedy,—worse than that in fact: the tragedies of the
Sunday Newspapers. She could be nothing but criminal or victim....
The Family broke into a murmur of astonishment and pity, so
obviously genuine, that young Deguilhem began to doubt his
conclusions and did not know what to think.
“It is quite simple,” said Thérèse. “The bad weather stopped my
going out, so I lost my appetite. I was hardly eating at all. It’s much
better to get thin than fat.... But I want to talk about you, Anne, I
am so delighted....”
She took Anne’s hands (she was sitting down and Anne was
standing) and looked at her. In that face, which looked so ravaged,
Anne could clearly recognise the expression whose persistence used
to irritate her in days gone by. She remembered how she used to
say. “When you have finished looking at me like that!”
“I am delighted to hear of your happiness, my little Anne.”
As she uttered the word “happiness” she smiled faintly at young
Deguilhem,—his bald head, his curly moustache, his sloping
shoulders, his tight little coat, and his fat little legs under the black-
and-grey striped trousers. (Oh well! A man like any other,—just a
husband!) Then once more she rested her eyes on Anne and said:
“Take your hat off.... Ah, now I recognise you, darling.”
Anne now saw quite close to her those slightly twisted lips, those
eyes that were always dry, those eyes that could not weep; but she
did not know what Thérèse was thinking. Young Deguilhem was
saying that winter in the country was not so dreadful for a woman
who is fond of her home:
“There are always so many things to do in a house.”
“But you don’t ask for any news of Marie.”
“That’s true.... Tell me about Marie....”
Anne seemed once more distrustful and hostile; she had been
saying for months, in the same tone as her mother: “I would have
forgiven her anything, because, after all, she is ill; but I cannot
forgive her indifference about Marie. When a mother takes no
interest in her child, you can invent any excuses you like for her, I
think it is disgraceful.”
Thérèse read the young girl’s thoughts: “She despises me
because I did not begin by talking about Marie. How can I explain?
She would not understand that I can think of nothing but myself,
that I am my only interest. Anne, of course, is simply waiting to have
children so as to efface herself in them as her mother does, and all
the women of the Family. But I want to find myself again; I am
trying to make my own acquaintance.... Anne will forget our youth
together, the caresses of Jean Azévédo, with the first howl of the
brat which that little object will beget upon her without even
troubling to take off his coat. The ambition of the women of the
Family is to lose all their individual existence. This complete self-
sacrifice for the species is a fine thing; I feel the beauty of that
absorption, that self-annihilation ... but I—No!...”
She tried not to listen to what people were saying, and to think of
Marie: the child must be able to talk now: “Perhaps it would amuse
me for a few minutes to listen to her, but I should soon get tired of
it, and want to be alone with myself again.”
“I suppose Marie talks by now?” she asked Anne.
“She repeats anything you like. It’s great fun; whenever she hears
a cock crow, or the noise of a motor-horn, she puts up her little
finger and says: Do you hear the music?’ She’s a perfect little love.”
Thérèse thought to herself; “I must try to listen to what they are
saying: my head feels quite empty; what is young Deguilhem talking
about?” She made a great effort and tried to attend.
“My men at Balisac don’t work like they do here: only four barrels
of stuff, while the Argelouse men get in seven or eight.”
“Well, with resin at its present price, they really must be lazy.”
“Do you know that these people can earn a hundred francs a day
sometimes? ... but I think we are tiring Madame Desqueyroux.”
Thérèse was resting her head against the back of her chair.
Everybody got up. Bernard decided that he would not go back to
Saint Clair. Young Deguilhem agreed to drive the car which the
chauffeur would bring back to Argelouse the following day with
Bernard’s luggage. Thérèse made an effort to get up but her
mother-in-law prevented her.
She shut her eyes, and heard Bernard say to Madame de la Trave:
“Really, that Balion pair are beyond everything! I’ll let them have
something they won’t forget.” “Take care, don’t do anything in a
hurry; we don’t want them to go away, they know a little too much:
and then don’t forget the estates: Balion’s the only person who
really knows the boundaries.”
And Madame de la Trave added in reply to some remark of
Bernard’s that Thérèse did not hear:
“All the same, be careful, don’t trust her too far; watch her
movements, and never let her go into the kitchen or dining-room
alone.... No, she hasn’t fainted: she’s asleep, or pretending to be....”
Thérèse opened her eyes again: Bernard stood in front of her; he
held a glass and said: “There, drink that: it’s a glass of port, it will
do you good.” And as he always did what he had made up his mind
to do he went into the kitchen, and proceeded to lose his temper.
Thérèse heard Balionte’s raucous patois and thought: “Bernard has
clearly been frightened: I wonder why?” At that moment he came
back.
“I think you would eat with more appetite in the dining-room than
in your own room. I have given orders for your place to be laid there
again.”
This was the Bernard she had known at the time of the enquiry:
the ally who wanted to save her at any price. And now he was
unreservedly anxious she should get well. Yes, it was clear he had
been frightened. Thérèse watched him, sitting opposite her, and
stirring the fire, but she could not guess what those great round
eyes of his were seeing in the flames:—the red and green drawing
from the Petit Parisien.
Incessant as the rain had been, not a single puddle was left in the
sand of Argelouse. In the very depths of winter, after an hour’s
sunshine, one could walk dry-shod in country sandals, along the
road, on that dry and yielding carpet of pine-needles. Bernard was
out shooting all day, but came back to meals: he was anxious about
Thérèse, and more attentive than he had ever been. There was but
little constraint in their relations. He made her weigh herself every
three days, and not smoke more than two cigarettes after each
meal. On Bernard’s advice Thérèse took long walks: “Exercise is the
best digestive,” he would say.
She was no longer afraid of Argelouse: it seemed as though the
pines were moving further off, opening their ranks, and signalling to
her to make her escape.
One evening Bernard had said to her: “I am only asking you to
wait until Anne’s marriage: we must be seen in company once more
by the whole neighbourhood: after that you will be free.” She had
not been able to sleep during the following night: her joy made her
restless and her eyes would not close. At dawn she heard the
innumerable cocks, who did not seem to be answering each other:
they were all crowing together and filling earth and heaven with
their united clamour. Bernard would let her loose into the world, just
as in days gone by he had let loose on the moors that wild sow he
had not been able to tame. When Anne was at last married, people
might say what they liked: Bernard would fling Thérèse into the
depths of Paris and then hurriedly retire; this was understood
between them. There would be no divorce or official separation;
some reason of health would be invented for the sake of
appearances,—“She is never well except when she is travelling.” And
Bernard would render, every All-Saints’ Day, an exact account of the
income from the sale of her resin.
Bernard did not question Thérèse about her plans, let her go and
hang herself somewhere else. “I shan’t have any peace,” he said to
his mother: “until she is off the premises.” And she had replied: “I’ve
no doubt she will take her maiden name again ... however, if she
gets into trouble, you will be dragged into it fast enough.” “But
Thérèse,” he said, “only kicked in harness; no one could be more
sensible when she had her freedom.” In any case, they must take
the risk. That was Monsieur Larroque’s opinion also. All things
considered, it was better that Thérèse should disappear; she would
be more quickly forgotten, and people would get out of the habit of
talking about her. Silence was the essential thing. This notion was so
firmly fixed in their minds that nothing could have uprooted it. They
must get Thérèse out of harness; and how impatient they were to
do it!
Thérèse loved to watch the close of winter despoiling the already
barren land, though the oaks had never shed their stubborn mantle
of dead leaves. She discovered that the silence of Argelouse had no
real existence. In the calmest weather the forest moaned like a
sorrowing human soul, and lulled itself to sleep: and the nights were
full of a murmur that never ceased. In her future life; that
unimaginable life before her, there would be dawns so barren that
she would perhaps regret the hour of awakening at Argelouse: that
marvellous clamour of myriad cocks. She would remember, in the
summers to come, the grasshoppers by day and the crickets by
night. Paris: no longer the torn and battered pines, but human
beings to be feared: a world of men, no longer a world of trees.
Husband and wife were astonished that their relations were so
little constrained. Thérèse reflected that people become endurable
as soon as we are sure we can get away from them. Bernard was
interested in Thérèse’s weight,—but also in her conversation. She
spoke more freely in his company than she had ever done: “In Paris
... when I am in Paris ...” she would begin: she would live in a hotel
and perhaps look for a flat. She would take up a course of study,
and go to lectures and concerts; “begin her education all over
again.” Bernard never thought of watching her, and ate his soup and
drank his wine, quite unconcerned. Doctor Pédemay, who sometimes
met them on the Argelouse road, said to his wife: “What is so
amazing is that they don’t look as if they were acting.”
CHAPTER XIII
On a warm morning in March, about ten o’clock, the stream of
humanity had begun to move, and was already surging against the
Café de la Paix outside which Bernard and Thérèse were sitting. She
threw away her cigarette, and carefully stamped it out, as people
from the Landes always do.
“Are you afraid of setting fire to the pavement?” Bernard laughed
constrainedly. He was annoyed with himself for having accompanied
Thérèse to Paris. As it was so soon after Anne’s marriage he had, of
course, done so out of deference to public opinion,—but mainly
because his wife had wished it. He told himself she had a positive
flair for false situations: so long as she remained in his life, he was
always in danger of being manœuvred into doing foolish things of
this kind; the wretched woman still had some sort of influence even
on a solid and self-respecting person like himself. At the very
moment of parting, he could not resist a feeling of sadness, which
he would never have admitted: nothing could have been more
foreign to his character than an emotion of this kind, inspired by any
one; but inspired by Thérèse,—it was inconceivable. He was so
impatient to be rid of all disturbing influences! He would not breathe
freely until he was in the train going South. The car would meet him
that evening at Langon: and on the Villandraut road, almost
immediately outside the station, the pines began. He watched
Thérèse’s profile, and her eyes that sometimes fixed upon a face in
the crowd and followed it until it disappeared; and he said abruptly:
“Thérèse ... I wanted to ask you....”
He turned his eyes away,—he had never been able to withstand
her look, and went on hurriedly: “I should like to know ... was it
because you hated me ... because you couldn’t bear the sight of
me?...”
He listened to his own words with amazement and annoyance.
Thérèse smiled, then looked at him fixedly and gravely. At last!
Bernard had asked a question, the very question that would have
been the first to come into Thérèse’s mind had she been in his place.
That confession, so carefully prepared, in the victoria along the
Nizan road, and then in the little local train to Saint Clair, that patient
meditation in the darkness, her efforts to reach the mainspring of
her act,—all that exhausting cross-examination of her conscience,
was perhaps on the point of bearing fruit. She had, unconsciously,
disturbed Bernard’s peace of mind. She had confused him: and now
he was questioning her like some one who is in doubt, and cannot
see clearly. He was less self-assured, and therefore more
sympathetic. Thérèse gazed at this unknown creature with a kind,
almost maternal expression. However, she replied in a bantering
tone:
“Didn’t you know it was to get your pines? Yes, I wanted to be in
sole possession of your pines.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“If I ever did believe that, I don’t believe it any more. Why did
you do it? You might as well tell me now.”
Her eyes stared into vacancy: on that pavement, on the bank of
that stream of mud and huddled human bodies, before taking the
plunge and joining in the struggle, or allowing herself to sink
beneath the surface, she saw a gleam like the light of breaking
dawn: she envisaged a return to the sad and desolate country,—a
whole life passed in meditation and striving after perfection, in the
silence of Argelouse ... the adventure of the soul, the quest for
God.... A Moorish vendor of carpets and glass necklaces thought she
was smiling at him, and came up to her: and she said in the same
bantering tone:
“I was going to answer: ‘I don’t know why I did it’; but now I
believe I do know. Perhaps it was to see a look of uneasiness,
curiosity, in those eyes of yours: the expression I have noticed in
them for the last moment or two:—just to upset your self-
satisfaction, in fact!”
“I suppose you can’t be serious even now,” he grumbled, in a
tone which reminded Thérèse of her honeymoon. “Do tell me: why
did you?”
She smiled no more, and in her turn asked a question:
“I suppose a man like you, Bernard, always knows why he does a
thing?”
“Naturally ... why, of course ... at least, I think so.”
“Indeed, I should so have wished you to know everything. If you
only knew how I have tortured myself to try and see clearly.... But,
you see, all the reasons I could have given you,—the moment I had
uttered them, they would have seemed unconvincing....”
“But,” said Bernard, impatiently, “there must have been a day
when you made up your mind ... when you actually did the thing?”
“Yes, the day of the great fire at Mano.”
Their heads were close together, and they were talking in low
tones. As they sat there, at that meeting of the Paris highways,
under the soft sunlight, and in a slightly chilly wind that smelt of
foreign tobacco, and stirred the red and yellow awnings, it seemed
so strange to recall that stifling afternoon, the horizon dense with
smoke, the tarnished blue of the sky, the penetrating torch-like
odour that rises from burning pine-forests,—and her own drowsy
heart in which the crime began to take on the semblance of a
purpose.
“This is how it happened: it was in the dining-room, which was
dark, as it always is at midday: you were talking with your head
slightly turned towards Balion, forgetting to count the drops that fell
into your glass.” Thérèse was not looking at Bernard, absorbed in
her anxiety not to omit the most trifling circumstances; but she
heard him laugh and turned towards him: Yes, he was laughing in
his stupid way: “No, what do you take me for,” he said! He did not
believe her,—and indeed what she was saying was hardly credible.
He grinned, and she recognised the old Bernard, full of self-
confidence and worldly wisdom. He had recovered himself and once
more she knew that she was lost.
“So the idea came to you,” he said jeeringly, “just like that, all of
a sudden, by the intervention of the Holy Ghost.”
How he loathed himself for having questioned Thérèse. It meant
the loss of all the accumulated contempt that he had heaped upon
the wretched woman. She was raising her head again! Why had he
yielded to that sudden longing to understand? Just as if there was
anything to understand in these hysterical creatures. But he had
spoken without thinking....
“Listen, Bernard, I’m not telling you this to persuade you of my
innocence, far from it!”
Her self-accusation was full of a strange and passionate sincerity:
to have been able to act, as she had done, in a kind of trance, for
months past, she must, she thought, have conceived and brooded
over thoughts of crime. Besides, when once the deed was done,
with what savage lucidity of purpose and persistence she had
pursued her aim!
“I only felt cruel when my hand trembled. I hated myself for
prolonging your sufferings; I felt I must bring the business to an
end, and quickly too! I obeyed a dreadful sense of duty,—yes, it was
almost like a duty.”
“Oh, these are phrases,” Bernard broke in. “Just try and tell me,
once and for all, what you wanted: come, now!”
“What I wanted? Indeed it would be easier to say what I did not
want. I did not want to play a part, move like an automaton, talk in
formulæ, be eternally false to a Thérèse who.... No, Bernard, it’s no
use: you see how hard I am trying to tell the truth. How is it that
everything I tell you rings so false?...”
“Don’t talk so loud: the man in front of us turned round just now.”
All Bernard wanted now was to get away: but he knew the
fantastic creature too well: hair-splitting was a favourite occupation
of hers. Thérèse, too, realised that her companion, who for one brief
second had come near to her, had again receded into the infinite
distance. But she persisted, called in the aid of her lovely smile, and
spoke with certain low and husky intonations he had always liked.
“But now, Bernard, I feel clearly that the Thérèse who stamps out
her cigarette because a spark will set the undergrowth on fire, the
Thérèse who liked to count the pines, and look after her resin:—the
Thérèse who was proud to marry a Desqueyroux, to hold a place in
one of the best families of the district, glad at last to settle down, as
the phrase goes;—that Thérèse is as real as the other, and as alive:
No, there was no need to sacrifice her to the other.”
“What other?”
She did not know what to answer, and he looked at his watch.
“I must come back sometimes, I suppose, on business ... and to
see Marie,” she said.
“What business? I look after the Family property. You will have
your place at all the official ceremonies at which, for the honour of
the Family and in Marie’s interests, we must be seen together. In as
large a Family as ours there are often weddings, I am glad to say,
and funerals as well. I shall be surprised, for instance, if Uncle
Martin lasts until the autumn: that will be an opportunity, since you
seem to be getting tired of your independence already.”
A policeman on horseback came up with a whistle at his lips,

opened an invisible sluice, and an army of pedestrians hurried across
the dark roadway before the wave of taxis submerged them once
more. “I ought to have gone out one night,” she thought, “on to the
great moors of the South, like Daguerre: I ought to have walked
through the stunted pines of that evil land,—walked until I was
exhausted. I should not have had the courage to keep my head
under water in one of the pools, as that Argelouse shepherd did last
year, because his daughter-in-law starved him. But I could have lain
down in the sand and shut my eyes.... It is true the crows and ants
don’t wait until....”
She watched the stream of humanity, that living mass, in which
her body would so soon be plunged and borne helpless away. She
could do nothing now. Bernard pulled out his watch again.
“A quarter to eleven: just time to call at the hotel....”
“You won’t be very warm travelling.”
“No, and I shall have to cover myself up this evening in the car.”
She saw in her mind’s eye the speeding car, and seemed to feel
the cold wind that smells of marshes, waste resin, burnt grass, mint,
and mist. She looked at Bernard and smiled that smile that made the
women of her country say in former days: “You can’t pretend she’s
pretty, but then she is so charming.” If Bernard had said: “I forgive
you; come ...” she would have got up and followed him. But
Bernard, after a momentary feeling of irritation at his own emotion,
was now only conscious of his detestation of anything odd, anything
that departed from the daily round of behaviour and conversation.
Bernard was made to fit the tracks, like his own carts; he could not
move outside the ruts: and only when he had found them again,
that very evening in the dining-room at Saint Clair, would he find
peace and quiet once more.
“I want to ask your pardon for the last time, Bernard.” She spoke
with great earnestness and with the intonation of despair,—a last
effort to reopen the conversation: “Say no more,” he protested.
“You will feel very lonely: though I am away, there is still my
empty place: it would have been better for you if I had died.”
He shrugged his shoulders slightly, and in a tone of something
like joviality, begged her not to worry herself about him:
“Every generation of the Desqueyroux family has had its old
bachelor, and I was meant for one of them. I have all the necessary
qualities—you’d be the last to deny that, wouldn’t you? I am only
sorry that we had a daughter, because the family name will die out.
It is true that even if we had stayed together, we should not have
wanted another child,—so all is really for the best. Don’t get up: stay
where you are.” He hailed a taxi, and came back to remind Thérèse
that he had paid for the drinks.
She stared for a long time at the dregs of port at the bottom of
Bernard’s glass; and then once more began to watch the passers-by.
A few seemed to be walking up and down waiting for someone. One
woman turned back twice, and smiled at Thérèse: she looked like a
work girl, or she was disguised as one. It was the hour when the
girls came out of the dressmakers’ shops. It did not occur to Thérèse
to move: she was perfectly content and not in the least depressed.
She decided not to go and see Jean Azévédo that afternoon,—and
heaved a sigh of relief: she did not want to see him. More
talk—more formulæ and phrases! She knew Jean Azévédo; but those
whose company she wanted, she did not know: she was merely
certain that they would not insist on conversation. Thérèse was no
longer afraid of solitude. She was content to remain silent and still:
and just as, if her body had been lying stretched out upon a heath in
her own country, ants and crows would have gathered round it, so
here she felt herself the centre of some dark activity that eddied
about her.
She felt hungry, got up, and saw her youthful figure reflected in a
tailor’s shop window: her tightly fitting travelling-dress suited her
admirably: but her face, with its high cheek-bones and peaked nose,
still bore the dreadful traces of those days at Argelouse. “I don’t look
old,” she thought. She lunched (as so often in her dreams) in the

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Inverse Problems for Partial Differential Equations

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4 Sturm-Liouville Theory 115

5 Heat, Wave, and Laplace Equations 145

5.6 Two-DimensionalWave Equation 168

6 Polar Coordinates 179

7 Spherical Coordinates 221

8 Fourier Transforms 261

8.2 FourierTransforms 277

10 Method of Characteristics 331

PART II EXPLICITLY SOLVED PROBLEMS

11 Fourier Series Problems 355

12 Sturm-Liouville Problems 387

13 Heat Equation Problems 425

14 Wave Equation Problems 481

15 Laplace Equation Problems 533

16 Fourier Transform Problems 567

17 Method of Characteristics Problems 597

18 Four Sample Midterm Examinations 615

19 Four Sample Final Examinations 631

Appendix A: Gamma Function 661

This textbookon linearpartial differential equations(POEs)consistsof two parts. In

To help studentsuse the text, we have incorporatedtwo specialfeatures. First, we

rank 1 X for very simple problems,

The secondfeatureof the text is a detailedsummaryat the endof eachchapter,with

readingthe entire manuscriptnumeroustimes. T. H. and I. E. L. would especially

THOMAS, ED, AND HENRY

Many physical,biological, and engineeringproblemscan be expressedmathemati-

Partial Differential Equations:Theoryand CompletelySolvedProblems,First Edition. By T. Hillen. 3

1.1 PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS

Let f : n ---t JR bea function definedon anopensetn c JR2 • Thepartialderivatives

!"'f( ) - 1· f(x + h, y) - f(x, y)

As a rule of thumb, the more importanta conceptis in mathematics,the more nota-

For example,the gradientof a function I(x, y) is definedas

Similarly, the Laplacianof a function I(x, y, z) is definedas

6.1(x, y, z) = div (grad J) = " . "I(x, y, z) = ,,2I(x, y, z)

F(x, y, u, ux, uy, U xx, uxy, U yy, uxxx, ... ) = 0.

We now define someterminology. In the equationsabove,u (the unknownfunction)

L(v+w)=Lv+Lw and L()..v) = )"Lv

for all functionsv andw in the domainof L andall scalars)...

The order of a PDE refersto the orderof the highest-orderderivativethat appearsin

Advectionequation: 8u+8u=0 (1.4)

KdV equation: Ut + UU xx + U xxx = 1 (1.7)