A favorite device of M. Philipon was to draw the king's face in the form of a huge pear, which it did somewhat resemble. Amateur draughtsmen also chalked the royal pear upon the walls of Paris; and the exaggerated pears with the king's features roughly outlined which everywhere met the eye excited the mocking laughter of the idle Parisian. No jest could have been so harmless if it had been unnoticed by the person at whom it was aimed, or noticed only with a smile. But the Government stooped to the imbecility of arraigning the author of the device. The _poire_ actually became an object of prosecution, and the editor of _Le Charivari_ was summoned before a jury on a charge of inciting to contempt against the person of the king by giving his face a ludicrous resemblance to one of the fruits of the earth. Philipon, when he rose to defend himself, exhibited to the jury a series of four sketches, upon which he commented. The first was a portrait of the king devoid of exaggeration or burlesque. "This sketch," said the draughtsman, "resembles Louis Philippe. Do you condemn it?" He then held up the second picture, which was also a very good portrait of the king; but in this one the toupet and the side-whiskers began to "flow together," as M. Champfleury has it (_s'onduler_), and the whole to assume a distant resemblance to the outline of a pear. "If you condemn the first sketch," said the imperturbable Philipon, "you must condemn this one which resembles it." He next showed a picture in which the pear was plainly manifest, though it bore an unmistakable likeness to the king. Finally, he held up to the court a figure of a large Burgundy pear, pure and simple, saying, "If you are consistent, gentlemen, you can not acquit this sketch either, for it certainly resembles the other three." Mr. Thackeray was mistaken in supposing that this impudent defense carried conviction to the minds of the jury. Philipon was condemned and fined. He avenged himself by arranging the court and jury upon a page of _Le Charivari_ in the form of a pear.[37] He and his artists played upon this theme hundreds of variations, until the Government found matter for a prosecution even in a picture of a monkey stealing a pear. The pear became at last too expensive a luxury for the conductor of _Le Charivari_, and that fruit was "exiled from the empire of caricature." [Footnote 37: "Histoire de la Caricature Moderne," p. 100, par Champfleury.]