This chapter does several things. It lets us know the gracious way that Madeleine set the victim of the carriage accident up for success. It draws us back to the transition Madeleine made to being mayor and the impact he had on the city. It tells us about the way that tax collection acted as an index for poverty vs prosperity, and that the trend in every way was toward prosperity on the whole for the citizens of the city. It lets us know that this is the setting that Fantine returned to, and that even though she had no relevant experience she was able to get a factory job in the womens workshop and it met the needs she had.
In the midst of this rise, where we see Madeleine as this very clear boon for the small city he had come to, we also see Javert and his evolving relationship to Madeleine. With Madeleine stepping into the role of mayor, we are told that Javert actively sought to avoid all contact with him, and in the cases where contact was required he used a professionalism of a sort to create distance and a barrier between them. For Javert, Madeleine was still someone who like himself was on the outside of society, and where Javert had chosen to posture himself as a protector, he knew that in the past Madeleine had been a criminal.
Building on this foundational assumption that there was no way in to society for people like them, and that there were only two choices available, Javert must view Madeleine as someone who has an alternative motive to all he is doing. He can’t actually be back inside society actively promoting and influencing flourishing. Instead all of this must be part of a larger ploy or plot, and Madeleine must be actively seeking to exploit and destroy the very society that Javert has vowed to protect. Here Javert has built for himself a scenario where he alone can see the “truth” and must act accordingly.
In that sense we can expect and anticipate that Javert will be looking for signs of this, will likely misread things, and will be looking for chances to “unmask” this terrible truth about Madeleine. The tragic irony, and it’s one I think we will see play out in manifold ways, is that Javert is the one actively hurting himself in this pursuit of justice.