When Guido di Bagni, ambassador from the Vatican to Paris, re,
turned to the Papal States (which covered a much larger territory
than the Vatican today) he asked Naude to come to Italy as his
librarian, and there Naude spent perhaps the most enjoyable ten years
of his life. He delighted in the intellectual climate of Italy; immedi,
ately on arrival, he indulged his devouring curiosity about all phe,
nomena, natural or unnatural, by writing an essay on the eruptions
of Mount Vesuvius. He was a prolific letter writer, corresponding
most notably with Hugo Grotius, Hobbes, Bacon, Kepler, Galileo,