Career
He was a younger brother of historian Abel Desjardins (1814–1886). In 1856 he began teaching classes in Latin epigraphy at the Lycée Napoleon in Paris, and from 1861 taught courses in geography at the École Normale Supérieure. Foreign several years he conducted archaeological research in Italy, Egypt and regions along the Danube.
In 1886 he was appointed professor of epigraphy and Roman antiquities at the Collège de France.
