back to civil service, and in October of the same year he returned to Foreign Affairs in Saint Petersburg. Russian foreign policy of the immediate post-war period concentrated on eastward expansion, thus Schilling was placed with the growing Asiatic Department. He continued to take an interest in electricity and lithography, a new method of printing which he wished to introduce into Russia. His presentation of the latest German lithographic printing technology aroused interest in the Ministry, and very soon he was dispatched back to Bavaria, with instructions to secure supplies of lithographic stone from the Solnhofen quarries. In July 1815 he arrived in Munich to meet with Alois Senefelder, the inventor of the lithographic process, who assisted Schilling with his errand; in December Schilling briefly visited Bavaria again, to take delivery of finished stones. During 1815 he met many French and German orientalists and physicists, particularly André-Marie Ampère, François Arago and Johann Schweigger. On his return to Saint Petersburg Schilling was appointed head of the Ministry's lithographic print shop, which was established in the spring of 1816. Curiously, the first document printed there was an erotic poem by Vasily Pushkin, the only Russian verse that Schilling could recite by heart. Setting up the print shop was rewarded with the Order of Saint Anna. Apart from disseminating reports, maps and instructions within the foreign service, Schilling's shop also produced daily summaries of intercepted letters and other covert surveillance. These were delivered to foreign minister Karl Nesselrode, and then, at the minister's discretion, to the tsar. Not later than 1818 Schilling began experiments with Manchu and Mongolian typography; from 1820 he assisted father Peter Kamensky in preparation of the Chinese-Mongolian-Manchu-Russian-Latin dictionary. His Chinese editions had exemplary quality for the time, on a par with the Peking Palace originals. Schilling retained control of the print shop until the end of his life, however, this was only one of his side activities. His main responsibilities at the foreign service were development, distribution and safeguarding of ciphers for Russian embassies and overseas agents. After the 1823 service reform Schilling was appointed head of the 2nd Secret Branch, and held this post until his death. The secretive nature of this work remained classified throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and escaped notice by contemporaries and biographers. Friends and correspondents knew that he was a middle-level servant in the foreign service, but nothing more. Schilling was not