At the time of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998, CBS News aired a lighthearted report on the French and their attitude toward infidelity.

D'ORMESSON: The whole French culture has love at its center, and perhaps cheating.
CBS REPORTER: Cheating is that important?
D'ORMESSON: Ah, cheating, cheating - let us say "looking elsewhere."............
Each time you cheat, you marry the new woman in America. And we keep the same wife and we have several mistresses. Roughly speaking, that's the position between your culture and ours...........
When you are well brought up, you try to cheat without too much harm, perhaps......... We cheat in so many, many, many hundred years that now you know how to manage. Don't try. It's very difficult, you know?
CBS REPORTER: You have to be French?
D'ORMESSON: You have to be French.
CBS REPORTER: Are you serious?
D'ORMESSON: Yes.

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer "yes" without having asked any clear question.
- Albert Camus, The Fall

If you want to seduce a woman at a swimming pool, it's best if you know how to swim.

"You can say everything in one look, and yet you can always deny the look, for it cannot be quoted word for word."
(Stendhal)

Levitte understood the key to seduction in diplomacy as well as other areas of life: to find common ground and shared values and build on them. Avoid confrontation and finger-pointing even if you are convinced you are right. Never let the other side lose face. Instead, get the other side to believe it is the winner.