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the Herald: he comes to make good his Lord's claim against thee, as he is a true Knight and thou an usurper and ravisher.
Injurious as this challenge was, Manfred reflected that it was not his interest to provoke the Marquis. He knew how well-founded the claim of Frederic was; nor was this the first time he had heard of it. Frederic's ancestors had assumed the stile of Princes of Otranto, from the death of Alfonso the good without issue; but Manfred, his father, and grandfather, had been too powerful for the house of Vicenza to dispossess them. Frederic, a martial and amorous young Prince, had married a beautiful young Lady, of whom he was enamoured, and who had died in childbed of Isabella. Her death affected him so much, that he had taken the cross and gone to the holy land, where he was wounded in an engagement against the infidels, made prisoner, and reported to be dead. When the news reached Manfred's ears, he bribed the guardians of the Lady Isabella to deliver her upto
