Twenty-franc gold coin of Napoleon III

A 20-franc gold coin cut with Napoleon III of the Second Empire, the bare-head type of 1856. In this period joint-stock credit houses that gathered the savings of the public — Crédit Mobilier, Crédit Lyonnais, Société Générale — were founded one after another, and Haussmann's rebuilding of Paris went forward on credit kept off the books. Meanwhile gold from California and Australia flowed in, and when the market fell below the official gold-to-silver ratio of fifteen and a half to one, silver coin was melted down and left for India. Silver fled the scales of bimetallism, and what stayed in France's hands was gold alone.