Napoleon III was once admonished to forbid smoking as it was such a terrible vice. "This 'vice'," he replied, "brings in one hundred million francs in taxes every year. I will certainly forbid it at once -- as soon as you can name a virtue that brings in as much revenue."

[Smoking may have offered a welcome distraction from his agonizing bladder stones. So painful was his condition that he once held his arm in the flame of a candle in aneffort to find relief.]

[In 1867, Napoleon III ordered a chemist to develop a food product "for the army, navy, and needy classes of the population." The result? Margarine.]