This article proposes a new reading of Courbet's The Meeting. The argument draws on French proverbs and expressions to show that complex significations of class, subservience, ridicule, and sovereignty clustered around such details in the painting as hats, beards, and canes. The essay suggests that the intersection of the linguistic and the visual produces a web of meanings thus far unexplored in Courbet's canvas. Through a focused analysis of a specific painting, the article aims to engage in dialogue with earlier methods of art historical interpretation. In doing so, it proposes other possibilities of signification and analysis.