La Vendetta transposes the fatality of a Corsican feud to Paris. Bartholoméo di Piombo, an old Corsican who took refuge under the Empire thanks to Bonaparte's protection, fled his island after exterminating the rival Porta family in a vendetta — all save one child who survived. His daughter Ginevra, a gifted painter, proud and passionate, meets in the studio where she studies a wounded young man whom she hides and nurses: Luigi Porta, the sole survivor of the enemy family, a proscribed officer of the imperial army. The two young people fall in love, at first ignorant of the curse dividing them. When Ginevra announces her intention to marry a Porta, old Piombo, implacable, refuses absolutely and curses his daughter in the name of the hereditary vendetta. Ginevra defies him and marries Luigi, but is at once disowned and cast out. Deprived of all support, the young couple sinks slowly into atrocious misery: despite their love and courage, they cannot live by their work, and their child dies of privation, followed by Ginevra herself. When Piombo, too late, learns of his daughter's agony, his intransigence will have served only to destroy what he loved most. Balzac exploits the theme of archaic honor and clan hatred transplanted into modern Paris, where they become a purely destructive force. The story sets youth, love, and talent against the murderous rigidity of ancestral codes and paternal pride. Short and intense, La Vendetta illustrates the cruelty of hereditary passions and the way an honor-principle, pushed to the absolute, leads to the annihilation of an entire line.