Everything the color of earth. A man on a horse looking pallid and dead. Silent witnesses who do not speak. The eventual statement that he has been dead for many years. This dream has all the ingredients for something terrifying but only flirts at the edges of the source of that terror.
In my reading I think Valjean is being confronted by the fact that he is in a very real danger of reviving a part of him that has been dead for quite some time now. His “old man”, the creature he had left behind when he hit his fork in the road on the heals of Myriel’s radical act of grace.
Now it seems that this dream is revealing that he has been dragging that old man around with him, and that old man is dangerously close to leaving the confines that he has been locked in.
Madeleine is awakened and shortly met with a knocking at the door and a voice letting him know that his horse and carriage have arrived. It takes him a while to sort out what horse and carriage are being talked about, but when he does he sends word that he’ll be down shortly. The question stands, what will he do? Will he send them away? Will he begin a journey to Arras? Will he first go to fetch Cosette? Hopefully the next chapter will let us know, but with Hugo we should be prepared for digressions about any number of things first!