He was a man of action, whose action, sharp, rapier-like, and instantaneous, was unsheathed only by instinctive feeling, by chivalry, honour, indignation, compassion, never by reflection, judgment, experience.

He could not really think.

What he learned had to reach him some other way.

His mind only bungled up against ideas, hustled them, so to speak, till they turned savage.
He sat idly in his cell when his work was done.

There was a kind of pressure on him, as if the walls were closing in on him.