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PARIS — Dominique Strauss-Kahn , the former head of the International Monetary Fund, was acquitted on Friday of aggravated pimping charges, concluding a case that made the private lives of public figures fair game for the French news media, even if the French themselves still seemed inclined to overlook dalliances by their political leaders.

The lurid details of the case, which included accounts of exclusive sex parties, nevertheless captivated France and shined an uncomfortable light on the sexual escapades of certain circles of a rich and powerful elite.

The ruling was widely expected. But after a four-year legal battle that paraded Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s libertinage, the judgment offered perhaps less a vindication for a man once considered a presidential contender than a sense of relief for a nation mostly exhausted by the subject.

It helped public patience little that Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s case overlapped with a monthslong story of President François Hollande’s affair with a woman who was not his live-in partner.

In 2011, Mr. Strauss-Kahn was arrested in New York and accused of assaulting a housekeeper at a hotel. Those charges were dropped, but in the aftermath allegations of sexual misconduct including sexual harassment and attempted rape surfaced.

The case concluded Friday against Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 66, centered on accusations that he used a network of friends and subordinates to organize lavish sex parties with prostitutes.

At the opening of the trial, Judge Bernard Lemaire said that the court was not an arbiter of public morality and that it was adjudicating only whether laws had been broken. But for many in France, where privacy, even for public figures, is often considered sacrosanct, the case crossed a threshold , as Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s self-described “rough” sexuality was dissected in court.

Christian Delporte, a history professor at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines who specializes in politics and the media, said Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s arrest in New York had started a debate on whether the private life of French politicians had for too long been swept under the rug. But he said that the case, full of lurid details, tested the limits of these new parameters.

“When your private life makes an entrance into the public space, the press now talks about it, like when Hollande was caught on his scooter ,” Mr. Delporte said, referring to the president’s secret excursions to visit his lover. “But the limit is giving morality lessons, and it is true that in the Strauss-Kahn affair, the more it went forward, the more it delved into questions of personal mores that had no consequence on public life.”

Pollsters who have looked at French attitudes toward the private lives of public figures say that in general voters are not swayed by private sexual activities. Although there was considerable interest in Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s private life, it did not translate into condemnation of his abilities to work in the public sphere, even though many felt he had crossed a line beyond other politicians’ escapades.

“This isn’t a fundamental variable in the political choices of the French,” said François Kraus, a pollster at Ifop, a polling institute based in Paris. “One can have a private life that is quite dissolute, one can have an unconventional marital arrangement,” he said, adding that it would not inform people’s voting here.

He added that views in France were deeply different from the “Anglo-Saxon model where Lutheran and Protestant morality believe that your comportment in private is a reflection of how you conduct your public life.”

In the Strauss-Kahn decision, judges in the northern French city of Lille condemned efforts to bring the case to trial, noting that the facts did not support the allegations of pimping. Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s “sexual practices” did not imply that he knew the women involved were prostitutes, the judges said.

Thirty-five text messages exchanged between Mr. Strauss-Kahn and another defendant, which investigating magistrates alleged should be interpreted as referring to the hiring of prostitutes, did not show that he was the “instigator” of sex parties with prostitutes, the judges said, adding that Mr. Strauss-Kahn had only the “behavior of a client,” which is not punishable under French law.

In France, having sex with prostitutes is not illegal, but soliciting, running brothels and pimping are. Mr. Strauss-Kahn faced up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 1.5 million euros, or about $1.7 million, if convicted.

During the trial, which took place in February, Mr. Strauss-Kahn acknowledged that he was present at the sex parties, which took place in Lille, Paris and Washington, and were attended by lawyers, judges, police officials and journalists, according to prosecutors. But he vehemently denied that he had played a part in organizing them or that he knew that some of the women present were prostitutes.

Thirteen other defendants stood trial, including a former Lille police chief. Most of the defendants were accused of facilitating the hiring of prostitutes for the parties.

Several of them were convicted of fraud and financial crimes linked to the organization of the sex parties, but all except one were acquitted of the pimping charges. Only René Kojfer, the former head of public relations at the Carlton Hotel in Lille, where some of the sex parties took place, was sentenced to a one-year suspended prison sentence for pimping.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn told the court in February that he would never have attended the parties if he had been aware that prostitutes were present, particularly given his position at the I.M.F. and his political ambitions.

“It would have been far too dangerous,” he said , noting that prostitutes could have been susceptible to “pressures.”