man, he had traveled widely, and made a long study of the art of war in Berlin. Comte de Mirabeau, ever the politician, predicted that the young Custine would become a well-respected diplomat. By 1792, Armand was Nicholas Luckner's aide-de-camp; following Luckner's dismissal, he entered a brief embassy duty in Berlin in 1792 as chargé de affaires and eventually, as diplomatic relations between France and the rest of Europe became strained, he was a hostage for the safe return of Prussian and Austrian diplomats in Paris. His deceased mother had left him capital of 700,000 livres, making him a wealthy young man; it was assumed that his father would also settle a suitable amount on him upon his marriage as well as the family estates in Niderviller, which included six farms. Custine, as an aristocratic general, and his son, an up-and-coming diplomat, seemed natural targets of suspicion. In 1792, after spending part of a year in Berlin, the younger Custine found himself under suspicion, despite his careful and circumspect behavior in Berlin: he had gone out of his way to make sure that he documented and reported any contact with the Prussians, and that all reports of his conversations were carefully and specifically annotated. He wrote to his mother-in-law that, by a miracle, he was not on the list of those to be arrested, and had avoided the September 1792 massacre at the Prison de l'Abbaye. He reported that he feared writing to his wife by the insecure post. He languished in Paris over the winter, but eventually he secured a position in his father's command in the Army of the Rhine, joining that army in Frankfurt. By August 1793, though, following his father's arrest, young Custine found himself proscribed, that is, on the list of suspected royalists. The September Law of Suspects accelerated the son's trial. The chief evidence against him seemed to be a letter he had written to his father the previous spring, suggesting that he resign from the army, and this, as well as other letters—real and forged—guaranteed his condemnation. He was condemned and guillotined a day later. He left a young son, Astolphe-Louis-Léonor, Marquis de Custine (18 March 1790 – 25 September 1857). Faience investment In 1770, Custine acquired property in the Niderviller region, which included a faience factory. The manufactory had been founded in 1735, but had enjoyed limited profitability. Various difficulties, including a