A gigantic king with a pear-shaped head sits enthroned at the top of a long ramp, his mouth wide open. Porters carry baskets of coins up the ramp into his mouth, while at right a ragged crowd, a mother with a baby among them, hands over its money. Beneath the throne, well-dressed men scramble for what falls, and others hurry toward a columned building at left. Honoré Daumier cast King Louis-Philippe as Rabelais's insatiable giant Gargantua, devouring coins wrung from the poor.

His throne is in fact a commode, and the notables below catch the commissions and medals that drop from it before hurrying to the Chamber of Deputies. The lithograph was published by Aubert and printed by Delaporte in December 1831, in Charles Philipon's circle at La Caricature, and the pear-shaped head follows Philipon's famous pear caricature of the king. It was shown in the window of La Caricature's shop in the Galerie Véro-Dodat to draw passers-by, until the authorities seized every copy and smashed the lithographic stone. On February 23, 1832, Daumier was sentenced to six months in prison and a 500-franc fine, and he served his term from August 1832 to January 1833.

The print made his name. It was first published in Paris in December 1831.