and thus started his rise to fame. She was a leading fashion icon; it was said that she was often the very first one to wear a new fashion, which was secondly adopted by the empress, and then accepted and copied by the rest of high society. Princess Pauline was an ardent patron of music and contemporary arts, and also became a leader of fashionable society. Whether in Paris or Vienna, she set the latest social trends. She taught French and Czech aristocrats to skate, and ladies to smoke cigars without fear of their reputations. She was acquainted with many composers and writers, including Charles Gounod, Camille Saint-Saëns, Prosper Mérimée and Alexandre Dumas), and corresponded with them. She befriended music composers Richard Wagner (who dedicated a piano composition to her) and Franz Liszt, and backed their career. At her request, Emperor Napoleon III invited Wagner to substantially amend his Tannhäuser for a special 1861 performance by the Paris Opéra, a revision that forms the basis of what is today known as the "Paris version". The project failed (it closed after three performances) and became a celebrated fiasco and one of the greatest music-related scandals of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, Pauline continued to spread the music of Wagner and other now-famous composers. Wagner later called her his most substantial support beside the Berlin socialite Marie von Schleinitz. One of her protégés was the leading Czech musician of that time, Bedřich Smetana, whom she introduced to the music circles of Vienna and Paris. Thanks to Pauline, Smetana's comic opera The Bartered Bride was produced in Vienna in 1892, to popular acclaim. She also organised salon performances of abridged versions of many famous operas, including Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, in which she took part both as a stage director and singer. The composer Karl Michael Ziehrer dedicated her one of his dances. In her private life, however, Pauline suffered several crises and disasters. As a child, she was an eyewitness to the bloody Revolution of 1848 in Vienna. In 1870 she remained at the side of Empress Eugénie in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. Later she aided the Empress' escape from Paris to Great Britain by secretly sending Eugénie's jewels to London in a diplomatic bag. In Vienna, she was admired for her social engagement, but also feared for her gossiping. Her enmity with Empress Elisabeth of Austria was almost legendary