It tells the story of a statue of Venus that comes to life and kills the son of its owner, whom it believes to be its husband.

During the night, the narrator hears heavy footsteps climbing the stairs; but he assumes that it is a drunken Alphonse going to bed.

The narrator runs down the hall to find a crowd of people surrounding the dead Alphonse, who looks as though he died in a fiery embrace.

At first, he suspects that it was the rival faction from the game of Paume; but later he hears the story of Alphonse's wife, who others claim has gone crazy.

He later hears that M. de Peyrehorade has died, and his wife had the statue melted down and turned into a bell for the local church.

The Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck drew on the story for his 1922 opera Venus as well as on the similar novella The Marble Statue (Das Marmorbild) by German writer Joseph von Eichendorff.