11:14 Oct 1, 2010 

@polyglot45
Yes, I totally agree on the meaning ( a kind of pretentious "tournez manège") but rallye-rouli seems an extremely strange way of putting it if you dismiss the reference to the toy. I'd say it's just a rather lame attempt at a joke (perhaps to show how babyish and infantile the whole thing is) but I haven't come up with a possible equivalent so far.

10:53 Oct 1, 2010 

I found the reference to the baby toy also but dismissed it as irrelevant ! I suspect the author means that Pierre regularly attended the debs delight dances organised each season on a rotating basis by wealthy or socially snobbish families

10:30 Oct 1, 2010 

I suspect a play on words.
Rallyes are what polyglot45 says, groups of rich young kids who meet up regularly for balls and other events.
See : http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2001/09/PINCON/15595

A rouli'rallye, on the other hand, is a baby toy, a kind of beeping steering wheel.
www.vtech-jouets.com/

How you combine that in English, I don't really know…

10:17 Oct 1, 2010 

but the "rallyes" are a sort of debs ball or coming out dance organised by the upper middle classes+ to ensure that their daughters meet the right sort of young men....
Maybe the "rouli" refers to the fact that it is a circuit and there is a sort of "roulement", i.e. a "season" or rota