Whatever may have been the sum of Philip's infidelities, and it cannot be denied that they were numerous, they were never more than temporary and vulgar intrigues, which, whilst they would naturally annoy his wife, did not threaten her permanent influence or interfere with her continuous marital life with her husband. With monotonous regularity almost every year the Queen gave birth to a child, usually a girl, whose advent was an excuse for the customary series of costly festivities so often described in earlier pages, festivities that in most cases lasted almost as long as the life of the child whose advent they greeted; for all the infants up to this time (1634) had died except the sturdy, promising little Baltasar Carlos, who was idolised by his father and mother, and, so far as the oppressive etiquette of the Court would allow, was petted by the whole Court. The little Prince who was born in 1629, had early developed a love for horsemanship and field sports, and as a baby horseman, hunter, or soldier, he is presented to the life again and again by Velazquez. From Flanders his admiring uncle Fernando sent him many presents, beautiful armour and weapons in miniature, which now adorn the rich Armeria in Madrid, martial toys, and above all in 1633 what {285} afterwards became the Prince's favourite steed, a "little devil of a stallion pony," as the Infante calls him, that had to be lashed liberally before Baltasar Carlos was allowed to mount him.[19] [Sidenote: The Portuguese problem] The limited number of his near relatives had become a source of embarrassment to Philip. Of his two brothers, one, Carlos, had died, and the other, the Infante Cardinal Fernando, was in Flanders fighting and working heroically. There were no other Spanish relatives, but the heir Baltasar Carlos and the beautiful illegitimate son Juan, now growing into a handsome, clever lad in the secluded castle of Ocaña, whilst the German archdukes had drifted farther and farther from Spain, as had the Savoy Princes. It had always been the policy of the house of Austria to keep the Spanish nobles powerless in the Peninsula. They might command Spanish armies abroad and act as viceroys across the seas, but were never to be trusted with executive power in the realms of Spain; and it had become increasingly difficult, now that the nobles of the outer realms had grown distrustful of Olivares, to find men of the respective provinces who were of sufficient rank and could be trusted to govern the non-Castilian territories in the name of the King. The principal difficulty was in Portugal, where the widest autonomy, and every possible guarantee against Spanish oppression, had been granted by Philip II. But, as we have seen, the tendency for a long time past, and especially under {286} Olivares, had been to curtail the rights enjoyed by Portugal since the union of the crowns.